Cobwebs and Silk
by dovesinclaire
Summary: Begins the night Willow and Tara get back together, but something gets in their way... Can the Scooby's find the truth, save their friend and change everything ...including Tara's death?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is my first shot at fanfic. Be gentle, be honest, enjoy.**

**Begins the night Willow and Tara get back together, but something gets in their way... Can the Scooby's find the truth, save their friend and change everything ...including Tara's death? **

**Just as a heads up thoughts are in italics, and the characters perspective your reading will be written in the break line (I know it's a bit confusing but go with it). Disclaimer: I own nothing**

* * *

**Chapter One: Another Way**

**{...[-(TARA)-]...}**

Tara let herself in, after all she'd lived here through some of the happiest moments of her life. She wasn't really sure what she was going to say to Willow, but she needed to talk to her. She needed to talk to her now. The Summer's front door swung open into an empty room, and Tara scanned the space.

Willows laptop was on the table. That's where they must have been when that tapped into the nerds cameras, when they sore Anya and Spike together. Tara exhaled slowly, and crinkled her brow.

_Poor Buffy, she must have felt so…_

_Poor Xander! That must have been so…_

Her eye found the open chest of weapons in the lounge and she crossed her arms tightly around herself as if she were cold.

Dawn had called her a few minutes ago, Tara thought she must have been wanting to hear the scoop on how the 'Willow and Tara getting coffee as friends. Not a coffee date. Just friends getting coffee" thing had went. And Tara remembered answering the phone with a smile with the day fresh in her mind and realizing how familiar this had become.

"Tara?" said a voice from the phone. But it wasn't an excited squeal or an hyperactive giggle, it was soft. Tara would have noticed if she hadn't been so prepared for a Dawn-styled lesbian-love-themed interrogation.

"For the last time Dawnie, If I kiss her, you're the first to know, promise. Well, hopefully the second. I mean it can't have been much of a kiss if she doesn't realize it happened." Tara laughed.

"Tara" this time she caught the tone.

"Dawn?" and she heard it in her own voice. The quietness, the fear, the vulnerability. Something had happened, something always happened, it was part of the Scoobie lifestyle, but she needed to know what. And she was relieved when Dawn burst into speech before she had to ask eactly what had happened.

"Xander has the axe, and Buffy's gone after him. And Willows just typing incessantly on her computer trying to catch them. But his gonna hurt them. And Buffy was really upset, Oh God Xander's face was just…"

Under normal circumstance Tara would have been impressed that Dawn had managed to throw the word incessantly into her vocabulary in such nonsensical sentence. But some one was hurt…or was going to be hurt? They were upset…. who was going where now?

"Sweetie breathe."

"This is so messed up! I mean Anya and Spike were having sex in the magic box and everyone sore on the cameras. I'd never seen that before. I mean we have cable so it's not like the visuals all new or whatever it's just, I know them. And they're not even…And I just don't… And now Xanders all broken up and I think Buffy is too, and she should have told me if she was into Spike. She should have said something. I should have noticed something, it all just"

Tara felt she her posture become a little less rigid as Dawn spoke. No one was dead. And magic wasn't even part of this equation. Those had been her worst fears.

"Dawnie do you need me to come over there?" But there wasn't a response. Tara listened carefully for a moment, and if she had been able to see Dawn she would noticed the loving smile that spread over her face at Tara's offer. A smile that simply acknowledged how nice it was to be cared for, and worried about without second thought. Dawn felt loved. But Tara couldn't seem the smile, so she just waited for a response. She could hear the faint clicking sounds she had barely registered before stop. And chair legs scrape against a solid surface. And then a voice, Willow's voice of course.

"Dawnie, I know Janice and you are close but I really doubt she can hear you smiling on the other end of that phone line" was what she said. And Tara smiled at the gentle kindness in her tone, despite the sadness. And Tara's expression fell, she really did sound sad. It was the kind of sadness that lingers in the subtext of a conversation, but is obvious to those aware of its presence. Dawns quite chuckle brought Tara out of her thoughts.

"Our relationship is of the telepathic kind." Was Dawn's response. And Tara found herself smiling again. She loved her family, Dawn, Buffy, Willow. She really did. And she loved how they could still surprise her after all they'd been through together. Tara had expected Dawn to call Willow a doofus and tell her she was talking to her, maybe phrasing it as just conversing with her lost-life-long-lesbian-love or something, but she just let it go. Which on the one hand showed how serious a night they'd had and on the other how grown up Dawn could be when it was needed.

"I've got some work to do kiddo, I'll just be upstairs kay?" Willow asked

"Okay." Dawn said with meaning and a nod.

Tara heard the disturbance and crackles of the cordless phone as Willow pulled Dawn into a hug. And she closed her eyes as if she was with them.

"Buffy'ill'fix'it." Tara heard one of the girls mumble into the others shoulder. And then the distorted clunking of the phone as they pulled away from each other. "It's gonna be okay. Everything will settle down, and we'll be okay." She heard Willow say.

"Add one more okay to that sentence and we'll be heading somewhere full of okay potential" Dawn called as if Willow had moved further away

"Night Dawnie, don't stay up to late" came a faint response as Willow headed up the stairs.

"I would never!" Dawn said in a mockingly melodramatic voice. And Willow laughed, and even from a distance Tara heard the sadness in that too.

"Sorry, that was just…" Dawn spoke into the headset now.

"Yea."

Tara shook her head as if to bring herself back to reality, and relaxed her own grip on her arms as she headed up the Summer's stairs as quietly as possible as not to wake anyone. Her boots softly creaked as she made her way through the painfully familiar hall, pictures hanging on either sides, light shinning through the only open doorway, the door to Willow's room, their old room. And she couldn't imagine Willow being there without her, they had moved in together after Joyce's death, but Tara supposed she must have been there alone all this time.

She stuck to the shadows as she made her way towards the door, fully expecting to be realized the moment she stepped closer. But she wasn't._Breathe and walk Maclay. Breathe and walk._

Then there was Willow.

Lying on her stomach across the bed, coloured pens laid out beside her, and from the doorway Tara could see a furrowed brow as she jotted notes in the margin of her textbook. Tara smiled quietly, _ever the mystery girl_. She had seen Willow like this countless times in the beginning, it was the only time she could just watch the red-head and go unnoticed, and she'd wonder if she could tell her everything, and what she'd say if she knew how adored she was.

But this wasn't quite the same, they'd been through a lot, and Willow wasn't as naïve as she'd once been, she'd lost hope in things she'd assumed would never fail her. And Tara was braver now. _But all that matters can't ever really change,_ _I will adore that girl until the sun runs cold and the moon is lost from memory_ Tara thought. But there was hurt, and she was scared, and they'd have to take this slowly. _That's what I'll say, I'll say we'll need time to put things back together._

Now Willow was shaking her head spinning a pen between her fingers and then tapping it against the pages as she stare intently at her work. And Tara was glad to have found the doorframe and leant her weight against it. It was nice, just to be there, just to see her.

And Tara noticed Willow hadn't changed clothes since they'd went out earlier that morning, she remembered thinking _Pale pink and denim, haven't seen that outfit before. _There had been a time when she had known Willow's wardrobe better then her own. And Tara hadn't changed her outfit either. She'd wanted to keep the day with her as long a possible, to cling to the faint smell of vanilla perfume that hung on her clothes after they'd hugged goodbye that morning.

"This doesn't make any sense." Willow muttered to herself. And Tara heard the sadness again. And she shifter her weight on the doorframe. That's why she had come, to stop the sadness, she loved her too much to let her stay in it any longer. So she broke the silence and revealed herself.

"Things fall apart. They fall apart so hard."

* * *

**[{..-(AMY)-..}]**

Amy was nervous, and itchy all over. She was always itchy, ever since Willow had made her human again. Ever since she was a rat. And she couldn't stop it. She'd tried magic, she'd tried doctors, she'd tried herbs and diets and strange solutions she'd found online. But it was there, she was itchy inside. Itchy in her organs, in her viscera , in her bones. It was enough to drive someone mad. It was enough to drive someone to Rack. He could stop it. When she was with him all she could feel was the magic.

She strode down the empty ally at a quarter to midnight, and one might have mistaken her for a lamb, endangered by the darkness, to be protected from the beasts. But there was only one monster there. And there was only one thing on her mind.

_Willow, it had be Willow, sweet little Willow, great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided. Great darkness, great light in a moment to be decided._That's what Rack had prophesied. That Willow was at a junction in a road, one lead to power and darkness and revenge and the other to light.

_Soon, he said it would be soon. I need more, more, more, great darkness, great darkness. Itchy, under my skin. She did it wrong. Made me come back wrong. Brought the itch. Itch in knuckles, itch in my joints, itch under my .Itch. Itch. _

_She just left me like that. For years and years she found the answer to every problem they needed with magic. Saved them over and over and over. Came against impossible odds. And she just left me like that. Amy the rat. Forgot about her pet. Her itchy little pet. Then she did it wrong. Made me come back wrong. Made me itch all over. All over. It's all over. _

Amy grabbed a small glass vile from her jacket and held it in her fingers as she lengthened her stride.

"Reveal" she muttered as she threw the vile to the pavement. As it shattered fine powder clouded like dust around the witch and it gathered around her face and stung her eyes. But she kept walking. And in the powder she could see Willow, lying on her bed.

_Its already lost. She isn't even tempted, doesn't feel the itch. She's got friends. She's got everything._

"No! No! No!" It was a desperate stubborn screech, and Amy didn't care that she was yelling at no-one in particular. She kicked the glass bottle as hard as she could against the curb and the last of it's fragments shattered loudly.

"She's never going to turn." Now she was muttering

"He said it had to be soon." She sneered. Willow was her answer, Willow was her key. She brought her to Rack, if she was consumed, if she became nothing but the magic throbbing through her veins. Then it would all be Amy's doing. Amy grinned. _I will have created the darkest rawest strongest witch in the world. And she would be indebted to me. I need Willow to be what she can. The great darkness. I need the darkness. _

Then in the cloud came a voice.

"Things fall apart. They fall apart so hard."

Amy looked up into the smoke, she hadn't seen the blonde at first but now she was with Willow, and near Willow's bed. _Tara ._She recalled, as they had met once before. _Tara. She had made Willow stop. She had left before it got worse_. The way Willow looked at her, it was as if she'd found every answer to every question she'd ever known, and Amy's curiosity was inflamed as she watched the scene unfold.

* * *

**{[..-(TARA)-..]}**

Willow slid upright on the bed, their bed.

"Tara?" _So much depth, so much sadness, so much history, so much love.__She just said my does she do that? Look at her, look at that girl. How is anyone not in love with that girl? Breathe Maclay, taking it slow, building trust, you have to trust each other._

_"_You can't ever put 'em back the way they were." It was hard to say, looking into green eyes, it was hard to think, to breathe.

"Are you okay?" And that was when Tara melted into puddle. She wasn't going to get through this without kissing that girl. She wasn't going to wait another day without touching her. She needed to be touching her.

_"_I'm sorry, it's just... You know, it takes time. You can't just have coffee and expect..."

"I know" Willow said it with shame.

* * *

**[{..-(AMY)-..}]**

"She's gonna take her back! " Amy yelled into the dusted screen

"She'll take Willow back, and she'll never touch it again, she'll never do another spell, it'll all be over. It'll all be over" Amy was desperate, she had to do something, she had to do something now. She was frantically searching her pockets for something, anything to stop this. To change how things would go.

"There's just so much to work through." The voice came from the smoke.

"No, no, no, no, no" Amy was distraught as she let the items she pulled from her jacket pocket onto the paved street.

"Trust has to be built again on both sides."

"Argghh!" Amy threw the Jacket off her shoulders and stomped it into the ground

" You have to learn if - if we're even the same people we were." Tara's voices continued. The two girls in a room completely oblivious to their observer.

"Useless its all useless" And she clawed at her skin, as if trying to tear it from her body. _Have to stop it. Have to make it stop! Make it stop! _As she dragged nails from her cheek, down her neck and to her chest they caught the chain of her necklace and it fell to the ground with a heavy twang. Heavier then you'd expected for a small black stone on a gold chain.

"If you can fit in each others lives. It's a long and important process..." the smoke was fading, she didn't have long

Amy scooped the pendant from the gutter

"Of course" she hissed and then it stopped the itching the madness, she was in control. She could change it all, drive Willow to the darkness.

"LAEDERE!" Amy screeched. And she felt black ink shoot from her finger tips and hot in her chest.

* * *

**[{..-(TARA)-..}]**

Their eyes met, this was going to happen, they were going to be alright. Tara felt safe, she felt warm, she felt like everything made more sense in this moment then it ever had in the history of the universe.

"...and can we just skip it? Can you just be..."

"LAEDERE!" a deafening screech hissed through the air. It assaulted eardrums and violated thoughts.

And that was the end of what Tara remembered of that night.

* * *

**{[[{-(WILLOW)-}]]}**

Willow could feel it. Cold, rigid snaps and crackles in her mind. Laedere...she knew what that meant...it meant hurt.

And the voice was almost familiar, but she hadn't the chance to place it.

_This is bad very very bad. _She thought. When had everything become black? When had the air grown thick and heavy in her lungs? When had the ground dissolved beneath her feet and stated grabbing at her ankles? Pulling her down. Pulling her away. Further and further away from it all.

"Tara?" she cried out into nothingness, they had been in a room hadn't they? Tara had been with her. Maybe she had dreamt it? She dreamt alot about Tara. It was one of the ways she'd first realized she was attracted to Tara in the first place. One of the ways she realized she was in love.

"Tara?!" dream or not she wasn't leaving without her. But then it hit her, and hit her hard.

Cold, wheeze, crunch, brittle folds within her mind. And then she realized what it was. Something about the metallic smell in the air, and the taste of acid in her mouth let her know. Magic. This was dark magic, trying to swallow her whole.

* * *

**[{...-(AMY)-...}]**

Amy was euphoric. Her pupils dilated like swollen black disks and her hand clutched the chain to her mother's old neck lace so tightly that her palm began to spilled blood.

"Mother dearest, I knew you were good for something." She said through a smirk.

And what had once been a smoke screen was now a black portal. A window to somewhere new. One thing was moving in there, one pale figure with red hair, Willow, thrashing about in the abyss of black. And Amy's face twisted in delight.

And then she looked at the small pendant hanging in her clutched fist. She hadn't known what it was. She'd just known it was powerful. But now she remembered stories of wish-granters and vengeance demons and she wondered if her mother realised the potential of the jewel she had carelessly left behind.

_A wish, the possibility of an alternate reality, a different world, _and without further thought Amy spoke

"I wish for a world where all things Willow holds dear belongs to me, I wish for a place where she cannot feel as she feels now, where the humanity of this world does not touch her, cannot reach her for anything. Where she is truly alone, Truly lost. And truly filled with despair." Her voice was confident, almost arrogant. And she only caught the voice of the demon she had summoned as her vision of the dark alley was fading.

"Done" it echoed.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Direct thoughts in italics, perspective in funny little brackets, would love you to tell me what you think so far. Disclaimer: They're not mine, I'm just trying to find a way to save them from death and destruction. **

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**Chapter 2: A New World**

**[{[{..(WILLOW)..}]}]**

Willow was cold , nauseous, and disorientated. She always felt that way when she walked through walls.

None of the Scooby's noticed her pass through the solid wall and into the magic box. After all, how would they? Not even the floor underneath her feet acknowledged her presence by creaking. She was nothing. Well that's not true, she was a ghost, or something that fit that general description

Willow's eyes quickly found what she was looking for, the gentle blonde sitting crossed legged on a stool close to the counter, her elbow leaning on her thigh and her hand propping her head upright. Willow sighed contently as the warmth returned to her chest.

_Real_ Willow thought_. Just the sight of her makes me feel like I could be real._

* * *

**{[...(TARA)...]}**

There was a familiarity to the chaos, another apocalypse, another unbeatable evil, the never-ending reign of darkness and light pulling at each other. Wearing each other thin, and Tara had been a part Scooby's from the start, ever since Buffy had come to Sunnydale high. So it was no surprise when Xander tried to diffused the tension with a witty remark and Giles snapped back is a sarcastic tone as Buffy paced back and forth trying to find something to punch and Amy sat seemingly uninterested rolling her eyes at the melodramatics of it all.

Tara couldn't help but study her girlfriend; Amy had always been detached when it came to end-of-the-world discussions. And Tara had always assumed it was a coping mechanism, but this particular night as Amy let out an exaggerated sigh she wondered if Amy really did care at all about the big bad in question, or who it might hurt. Resting her head on her hand she ignored the shiver that thought evoked and attempted to focus on Giles' interpretation of Buffy's latest dream which was possibly-prophetic or possibly-the-internal-mystery-that-is-Buffy's-brain.

"I understand you are…" he paused to select the correct term "disturbed Buffy…concerned even, but this is no means to panic until we gather any solid evidence on the matter…"

"It was so real Giles. It felt as real as talking to you right now." Buffy implored.

"It was so dark, and itchy, and it was hard to breathe" She closed her eyes, trying to remember.

"And I could hear someone struggling and thrashing about in the black…But I don't think it was mine, the dream, it felt like someone else's. Like I was intruding on someone else's memory…or maybe like they sent it to me, like they were asking for help."

There was a silence. Tara shifted uncomfortably on her stool. The dream was vague at best. Realistically they had nothing to go on except a feeling in Buffy's gut. But in saying that, it had never led them astray thus far.

Amy broke the silence.

"Well not that this isn't the laugh-riot of the century, but Tara and I had plans. Other, plans. As in, interrupted because something big was apparently happening but this is all very not big. In fact it just sounds like Buffy's had another jab from the crazy-maker demon. You did drink all of the antidote I made for you right? No more _I'm in a looney-bin_ kinda fantasies floating around that little head of yours?" Amy bantered lightly with a teasing smile.

"No! Defiantly not crazy here." Buffy squealed defensively and flicked her eyes from Xander to Tara to Giles as if pleading her case.

"Okay, okay. No need to wig out about it. Just checking." Amy said holding her hands up.

Tara watched Amy lower her hands and slide her jacket over her shoulders as she obviously was preparing to leave. _I don't like when she does that. It's rude. _Tara cringed again as she remained seated. Unsure of whether her girlfriends behavior needed to be addressed or if she should just let it go. After all, her mother use to tell her _you should never try and change the ones you love, because all to soon you want be able to recognize them at all._

"Oh there was something else!" Buffy exclaimed as if the thought had hit her out of nowhere like lightning. Tara tried to ignore Amy grab the keys and let them jingle as Buffy continued.

"When I woke up I felt funny…it was like…the ghost girl…I…it was almost like I remembered her…But she was…"

"I was in your dream?" Whispered a quiet voice from near the front door of the Magic Box. All eyes suddenly spun to the pale figured, with red hair, and two desperate green eyes hanging on Buffy's admission as if they we're enough to sustain her through the coldest winter night. And Tara's heart broke the instant she sore Willow's face. The intense longing behind those huge pools of green.

_Can those eyes get any bigger?_

Then suddenly she wondered how long the poor thing had been standing unnoticed in the doorway, her presence completely ignored. Tara slid off the stool and onto her feet.

"Scar" the name slipped from Tara's lips, well it was as close to a name they had.

When they stumbled across the ghost three years earlier Faith had suggested they call her Red. But Dawn had decided that Scarlet would be better. "Scarlet's actually a name", she had state proudly. Ever since Dawn and the ghost had been close, Scarlet helped her with her homework almost every afternoon. She was incredibly bright for a ghost who had no idea who she was or anything that had happened to her before three years ago.

"I was in your dream?" she repeated. The words hung in the air for a moment.

"Not exactly." Buffy looked apologetic. And Tara knew she was probably a little embarrassed she had been caught calling Scarlet "the ghost girl" again.

"I just sorta...you were on my mind when I woke up, like residual memory of a dream I didn't remember having…if that make sense at all…" Buffy tried to explain.

Scarlet's disappointment was painfully clear as she shifted her eyes from Buffy to the floor. Tara could see everything tense inside her and then relax with a silent sigh as she squeezed her eyes close and gave her head the slightest shake. Tara felt herself sink internally for the girl and forced herself to look away. Giles was cleaning his glasses. Xander and Buffy sharing a meaningful look and then she heard Amy fidget with the keys impatiently. _She's really not loving this tonight is she!_

"Sorry. I just…sorry for interrupting. Let me know if…you know anthing…" The ghost muttered. Her eyes found Tara's and gave her a solemn nod before she backed seamlessly through the door, gone as quickly as she was realized. Tara swallowed heavily; she had seen the glistening tears about to spill from bright green eyes. Scarlet was devastated. Another day and no answers, no cure, nothing but a bodiless form who floated from space to space. _It must be impossibly lonely. Living like that. _Tara pondered.

"And on a more jelly-filed note, who wants the last donut? Because I for one am just craving some of that comforting sugary goodness." Xander announced in a tense voice as he picked up a cardboard box off the table. Buffy smiled slightly. Classic Xander, trying to lighten the mood and talking about food all in the one sentence.

"Knock yourself out." Buffy said.

"Oh come on guys, if I keep getting the sweets whenever ghosty-McPale stops by and makes things all awkward then I'll be one obese little American… Amy? You want?"

"Not for me. Ghost girl makes me queasy." Amy deadpanned as she met Tara's glare with a shrug.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3: Little Gaps

**A/N: Let me know if you want more. Criticism welcome. Same as before, whoevers perspective you reading is in the funny little brackets. Thoughts is italics. Disclaimer: In the short period between now and my last update I did not buy the rights to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (shocker). **

* * *

**Chapter 3: Little Gaps**

**{..{[(BUFFY)]}..}**

Something was wrong. Call it intuition, call it slayer instincts, call it whatever the hell you want. Buffy was sure that something was wrong.

It wasn't the dream that was unsettling her, well not really. It was waking up…it was like as she woke all these thoughts instantly drained from her brain. So many all at once that it was impossible to keep up. Then they were gone. And now she was left with a funny feeling in her gut and these little gaps in her mind, so subtle that if you weren't concentrating you'd never be aware of their existence. But Buffy had been doing this long enough to know better than to submit to blissful ignorance. There were hundreds of people living in Sunnydale who turned a blind eye to mystical occurrences every day, but Buffy couldn't afford such a liberty. This was her job. Hell this was her birthright. And something felt wrong. Something felt very very wrong.

It was a hard feeling to describe…like a vague inkling gently shifting through the air, through her skin, through everyone around her. It made Buffy uneasy...because she had felt this way before.

_When…when have I felt like this…_ Buffy wondered as she round-house kicked the punching bag in the training room out the back of the magic box. She then promptly ducked as it swung full force in her direction and continued her assault on the inanimate object.

_WAIT! _Then it hit her. A thought, not the punching bag.

_JONATHAN! I felt it when he made a backwards universe where he was some all-knowing-all- awesome-macho-can-do-no-wrong guy! But that wasn't the first time…I remember it felt familiar even then…OH OH! CORDELIA! She made that wish in senior year, and I felt in then too! I just didn't really notice it…and again…I've felt it another time…come on Buffy think! Think! Dam it think! _

She threw another combination blow ending in an uppercut punch and the bag swung away from her. Training was good at times like this. It helped her release stress, or maybe it helped her ignore stress. Either way it was defiantly what she needed after a very inconclusive Scooby meeting.

_…__Dawn. I felt it when she first appeared in my bedroom… the moment I sore her it was like all these memories of life without her faded into ones when she was around. It was so subtle so fast that I hardly even remember it happening, but it did. _

It was then that it suddenly dawned on Buffy the implications of this realization. She threw her training gear on the floor, grabbed her bag and ran to the door.

_There's something wrong with this reality._

* * *

**{{…{[(TARA)]}…}]**

"See you're doing it again." Amy teased brining Tara out of somber thoughts.

"Hmmmm?" Tara looked from the coffee cup she had been staring at intently, and up to her girlfriend who sat opposite her in the crowded café. The Espresso Pump wasn't exactly the classiest joint around, but the food was good, and the coffee was better. Plus it was on the same block as the Magic Box, and Amy lived by the motto that convenience was priceless.

"You're doing that thing again."

"What thing?" Tara asked.

"Moping…sulking…brooding. Take your pick. I'm easy." Amy said lightly while taking a sip from her mocha.

"Oh, Sorry. I guess I'm a little distracted or something." And that was the truth. Tara was defiantly distracted. All she could think about was Scarlet's big green eyes staring right into her.

Tara never really knew pain until she met Scarlet. Back then she was 17, a small town girl who'd moved with her family to California two years earlier when her father was offered a job at the Sunnydale Mechanic and Vehicle Repair Shop. And sure, she was friends with the vampire slayer so she'd witnessed a fair amount of dustings, and sure, her father could be chauvinistic and cruel at times but she'd never really known that sort of hardship that stains your innocence and marks you forever.

Tara had been sitting in the school library alone, trying to work out how to stop the mayor's ascension while the others patrolled, when she felt something watching her. Glancing from the ancient text she scanned the room without result.

"Is anyone t-there?" The logical part of her brain knew she had probably imagined it. One of the side-effects of being a Scooby was an occasional episode paranoia, but this was different. She could feel something…no someone. She felt their aurora as if it was tide loosely to her own and tugged gently on the string. It was the strangest sensation. Tara went towards it, which seemed like the natural thing to do.

"Hello?" She called towards the shelves of books above her, but no answer came, no shuffling of feet, no whisperings of breath. Nothing.

"I k-know you there…" She let the phrase linger as if waiting for a response.

Tara moved closer.

"Please, I won't h-hurt you."

She carefully followed the strange sensation around the first shelf of books and froze.

There she was.

It was then that the aurora flooded Tara's senses, she could smell it, taste it, and feel it in every conceivable way. And it smelt sweeter then perfume, tasted like strawberries, and felt like every molecule in her body had finally found where they were meant to be. It made her warm from the tip of her toes to the flush in her cheeks. Tara had never felt that much of anything in her entire life. It was the purest thing she had ever felt. And she knew, at that moment, that she'd been luckier than most people ever would be, to feel what she felt in that second.

Before her was a slight girl with long red hair crouched in a ball on the floor. Her arms gripping her legs tightly to her chest and the biggest green eye's you've ever seen. In those eyes Tara read volumes: fear, vulnerability, confusion, doubt, and she wanted to fix it all. She lowered herself slowly down to the girl's level, carful to make no sudden movements. Once there she exhaled a long breath.

"A-are you okay?" she asked.

The girl just stared at her.

"Hey, it's alright." Tara gently assured as she reached a hand out to touch long red hair that had fallen over the girls face. Tara sometimes still dreamed about that moment, when her fingers passed right through the other girl and lingered there for a second of disbelief before Tara retracted her hand with a sudden jerk. Every thought in her head vanished, every piece of knowledge about mystical creatures, demons and shape shifters. All she was was horrified.

"Don't!" The girl yelled as terrified warning. But it was too late. And the girl twisted into herself as if maybe she could hide away and squeezed two beautiful pools of green tightly shut.

"W-w-what are y-you?" Tara was in shock, but managed to get the words out. _She so scared. _

Two green eyes opened again but were now brimming with tears. The ghost of a girl was shaking.

"I have no idea." She whispered.

Tara realized now that there was the pain. More pain then Tara had ever felt before, and it ripped through her veins and ached behind her eyes. And she knew it well now. She had felt it when her mother got sick. She had felt it when she died. She had felt it when her farther glared as he walked out the door the last time they'd spoken. And she'd felt it today, when Scarlet backed silently through the magic box wall.

"You really shouldn't let her get to you." Amy said flippantly, dragging Tara back to reality a second time.

"Who?" Tara asked, struggling to concentrate on the conversation.

"Who do you think? Crimson-Casper." Amy paused.

"She's playing you. I know you guys all eat up that naïve-pouty-see-right-through-me crap, but I don't." Her tone was still casual, but she was getting louder.

"I don't want to do this now Amy, I'm fine really, and I know we can't really trust her okay? I just…I feel sorry for her." Tara realized that she sounded like she was begging to avoid the confrontation. She knew Amy's opinion of Scarlet. Everyone knew.

"Yea she's pretty pitiful." Amy rolled her eyes, as she lifted her mocha back to her mouth and drained the contents of the cup. Tara sat quietly. Part of her wanted to defend Scarlet, part of her wanted to ask Amy what her problem was lately. She'd never been a particular warm and cuddly kind of person, but sometimes she just seemed downright cold.

* * *

**{[…{(AMY)}…]}**

There was a lull in their conversation. _This world is fun_. Amy thought. There was no itch here. Not even the slightest tickle. And everyone was like her puppet, she controlled it all. It was amazing, today she appeared in this place with full memory of a forged world, and full knowledge of the real one she'd left behind. She was dating Tara, which appealed to the power addict inside her. She felt strong. She took the one thing Willow had treasured most, it was all hers, everything was hers. And Willow had nothing. Everything was according to plan, Willow was desperate alright. But wasn't dark…Amy wanted her to turn. Needed her to turn.

_Willow need's to have no other choice…needs to be begging for the darkness._ Then and idea popped into her head.

"That reminds me. I've been thinking, it's been three years of ghost girl floating about, sharing the misery. And that's been fun don't get me wrong…" Amy smiled as the sarcasm slid effortlessly threw her teeth.

"But I think it's time. I mean she's obviously not letting go of whatever's holding her here. I think we should help..." Amy raised her eyebrows hoping Tara would understand her suggestion.

"What?" Tara sounded shocked and afraid...Amy liked it

"Exorcism." A blunt statement.

"W-what?" Tara repeated

"Come on Tara, don't do that. You know what needs to be done. We can do it, you and me. It'll be easy, easier then getting Angel his soul back! Easier than half the things we've done."

"Amy?" The horror in Tara's expression spurred Amy forward.

"What's the problem? We fight demons, we help good guys. It doesn't matter which category Red falls into, were still checking a box." Amy was surprisingly casual.

"A-Amy, we, ss-she's, we can't. It's not the natural order of t-things..."

"She's not natural Tara!" Amy laughed.

"What do you think?! She's just some helpless amnesia chick who misplaced her physical form for three years?! She's not meant to be here Tara." She hissed.

Tara was silent. Amy couldn't read that expression. She was never that good at reading emotions.

"You know I'm right. We have to do this. We have to send her away from this world. She doesn't belong here. She never belonged here. We're doing this, alright?"

Tara was still silent.

_Oh this is going to be too easy. _Amy smiled.


	4. Chapter 4:

**A/N: Just letting you know, this chapter talks about death of a loved one, dealing with grief, that sorta thing. There's also lesbian sexual content coming up (rating: M) so if that's in anyway offensive to you I recommend not reading on.**

**Also I love thoughts, any thoughts, so share yours if you've got some about what I'm writing. Thanks for reading!**

**Disclaimer: of course I do****n't own any Buffy the Vampire Slayer original material, and of course no one's paying me to come up with stories about characters that aren't even on TV anymore. You know the drill.**

* * *

_Previously in Cobwebs and Silk..._

"What do you think?! She's just some helpless amnesia chick who misplaced her physical form for three years?! She's not meant to be here Tara." She hissed.

Tara was silent. Amy couldn't read that expression. She was never that good at reading emotions.

"You know I'm right. We have to do this. We have to send her away from this world. She doesn't belong here. She never belonged here. We're doing this, alright?"

Tara was still silent.

_Oh this is going to be too easy._Amy smiled.

* * *

**Chapter 4: Lub-dub **

**{{…{[(TARA)]}…}]**

Tara felt accountable for the silence, manipulated by it, nauseous because of it, but despite all that she couldn't seem to remember how to speak. Her jaw was stiff, locked in place. Her eyes wide. And she had the strange sensation that all the blood had suddenly drained from her head and pooled in her chest. She could feel her heart contract and relax in rigid tight motions, as all she was aware of was it's beating. It was so fast. Lub-dub, .lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

Tara had felt this sensation exactly once in her life. It was the day that the earth shattered and the sky fell into oblivion, the day that her mother died.

"I'm sorry sir, she's gone." A well dressed man with a stethoscope hung over his shoulders said.

He was addressing her farther, as she sat close by on one of the familiar waiting room chairs in ICU. She had spent hours in this waiting room over the last week. Usually a receptionist would say, "Oh their just getting your mother cleaned up dear, why don't you just stay here until I call you in." Or "She's just in the middle of a procedure darling, sit tight, I'll let you know when you can see her." When Tara thought about it she realized that she had spent more time here, on this chair, then the one beside her mother's bed. But in a way she was grateful. Because whenever they would usher her through into the unit her mother would be comfortably propped up in bed with fresh white pillows and Tara didn't want to know what she looked like before they "cleaned her up" because she doubted there was much dignity in that. She remembered little things, like braiding her mother hair because she hated when it fell in her face, and realizing a few drops of dry blood on perfectly folded white sheets. But all in all, she knew that her mother wasn't going to make it, she'd known for three weeks, because her mother had told her the day they found the tumors. "Tara baby, look at me." She had implored. Tara remembered soft blue eyes. She could still smell the moisturizer she used on her skin as she lifted her chin and tucked blonde hair behind ears.

Tara hadn't expected it would feel so sudden; she'd had a month, one whole month to accept it. That's more time than most people get. And her mother was quite the fortune-teller; she knew this was how it would end. In a way this is how everyone ends, so why is the human race perpetually shocked when their inevitable mortality is proven?

But Tara couldn't feel anything, nothing but lub-dub, .lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

Amy was just staring openly, here in the public place, the safety of the Espresso Pump. _I wish she would stop looking at me like that, why is she looking at me like that? _

"Tare? Hello?" She waved her fingers.

_Say something, do something._

"Tara." an impatient tone.

_Anything, just react. _But Tara was just staring at Amy across the table.

" This is Amy speaking requesting Miss Maclay return to the conversation. I repeat Miss Maclay return to the conversation." Amy was now doing her best impression pilot and speaking into her hand as if there was an invisible walkie-talkie in her palm.

"I-I-I-I ummmmm." She managed.

"There she is!" Amy laughed.

"Www-we c-can't j-just..." she stammered. She really didn't stutter anymore, not normally, but this wasn't normal. Far from it.

"Hey, hey, Tare." Amy grabbed Tara's hand in attempt to comfort, but Tara didn't feel reassured, she felt like she was going to be sick.

"We don't have to do it tonight. I'll give you some time, hey?"

Tara nodded and offered a strangled smile. That was all she could do, because she was still stuck in the state of lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

* * *

**[[...{[(GILES)]}...]]**

Giles arrived home from the Magic Box. He wasn't really needed there now that Anya was so efficient at business and had mastered the art of customer service. Buffy had retired to the training room and the others had gone on their own ways.

_They're all so young and I'm just...superfluous. I'm beginning to wonder if my redundancy has become so blatantly obvious that I really have no other choice then to leave._

He sighed gently as he made his way to the kitchen to boil the kettle. This morning when Giles woke up he felt...out of place. He was shocked at the warmth of the sun, and the size of his room. He'd been shocked he wasn't in England. It was such a strange notion, the realization of his own irrelevance, but Giles decided it was some sort of sign to tell him it was time to move on.

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted when his slammed open with tremendous force.

"GILES?!" Buffy yelled as she burst through the door.

Giles poked his head around the corner.

"Giles! You're here, great! I need to talk to you! My dream I figured it out! Well not the dream part...the waking up part..."

"You practically broke down my door to tell me you understand waking up this morning?" Giles asked in a tiresome tone of voice as he met Buffy in his lounge room.

"No Giles, listen to me okay. I think..." she crinkled her forehead.

"I think there's something wrong with this reality. " She said seriously.

"Like an alternate universe? A portal? A corresponding plain?" He was intrigued. The Watcher within him beaming with suggestions.

"I dunno...I just, the weird feeling I've got...I've had it before. With Jonathan, and Cordy's wish and Dawn and I think it means something..."

"Like you've sensed a shift in reality? Well that's very intuitive of you Buffy, you're sure this isn't just stress, I mean you're under a lot of pressure and the slayer had certain responsibilities that might..."

"Giles. I'm sure. My spider-senses are defiantly tingling."

There was a quiet moment as Giles accepted Buffy's statement, letting it sink in to his mind and adjust to his thinking.

"And you say you've had this feeling before?"

Buffy nodded.

"Well that...that's a very disturbing thought now isn't it..." Giles muttered as he walked toward his collection of books to investigate.

* * *

**{{…{[(TARA)]}…}]**

Amy had wanted to go out after coffee, but Tara wasn't in the mood.

And when Amy suggested they go to her place, Tara said she felt like being in her own apartment. She knew Amy didn't like it there. She always said that she hated being on campus unless absolutely necessary, and that the little fairy lights looked like a twelve year-old had been in charge of her decorating.

Amy had started being overly friendly as they made their way up flights of stairs and through halls and Tara couldn't even fain interest.

In truth Amy was really scaring her. The way she talked, the way she acted. Like everything was hers to with as she pleased. Even now as Tara stood inside her room and Amy worked her fingers underneath the hem of her shirt, sliding it over her head. Tara felt owned.

She still couldn't breath properly since the Espresso Pump, and she wished Amy had got the hint and left her alone after they had got here. She needed space. But Amy seemed to have other ideas as she kissed the skin of Tara's neck with greedy lips, biting at her pulse point, and licking up to her ear.

Tara was tied, too tired to argue with her girlfriend right now. But she wasn't really there. She tried to concentrate on feeling Amy, feeling her hands fiddle with the clasp of her bra, but she couldn't. She was numb.

As Amy guided her back to the bed Tara was glad that the lights were off, glad Amy couldn't see her face. Amy tossed the bra across the room and started her way down Tara's chest. Tara knew she should close her eyes. Knew she should focus on the warmth of Amy's hands, and lips and tongue but she simply glanced around the room wondering how Amy was so unaware of her discontentment. Then, she sore something…in the far corner of the room, shadowed by the darkness. Amy roughly pushed Tara so that she sit on the bed and began removing boots, unzipping jeans, and Tara causally slid her hand to the lamp by her bed a flicked it on.

Then there she was. Two glistening green eyes frozen and petrified. Scarlet.

"Hmmm" Amy groaned throwing jeans to the floor oblivious to the ghost by the oak wardrobe behind her.

"Mm-No-Mmm-Lights-Ahhmm" Amy groaned as she pressed her mouth to Tara's thighs.

Tara was staring, wide eyed and frozen at the small redhead in the corner. Scarlet seemed in some state of extreme shock, she was standing stiffly as if willing her limbs to move, desperate to be anywhere else. But all she seemed able to do was stare into Tara's eyes looking terrified, embarrassed and very out of place.

Tara quickly flicked the lamp off.

"That's more like it." Amy growled as she started kissing up Tara's leg. It was only then that Tara realized what was happening. Scarlet often stayed here. Sometimes they would talk, or sometimes they would just sit in mutual silence. Either way tonight she had obviously been waiting for Tara to come home. And home Tara was…with Amy, who was pushing her legs apart with strong hands.

But Tara could see Scarlet now in the dim lighting, and she looked simply mortified. _She'll never feel this... She's probably never even been kissed before, if she has she doesn't even remember... She can't even hold someone's hand…_Tara thought sadly. She could feel it now, Scarlet's aurora tugging gently at her own as if anchored by a rope. She could taste the strawberries and smell sweetness all around her.

Then the red haired girl shook her head mutely. As if trying to say something, trying to apologize, and Tara realized that she probably assumed she was angry.

"It's okay" Tara mouthed silently to her friend.

"Thank-you" Scarlet mouthed with a apprehensive nod as she shyly looked away and glided slowly from the room. It was then that the numbness returned, and Tara couldn't help miss the other girl's presence.

Amy never even noticed a thing.

_TBC_


	5. Chapter 5: Sad, Lost and Floaty

**A/N: I promise I'm getting to Willow and Tara goodness, the next chapter is going to be all about the goodness.**

**Again, whoever's perspective is in funky brackets. Thoughts in italics. Feedback is awesome, I haven't done this before, so let me know if it's terrible, or if you like it, or how you think it could be better.**

**Disclaimer: ditto to every other disclaimer on this site. **

* * *

**Chapter 6: Sad, Floaty and Lost **

**{[-{(XANDER)}-]}**

The gang had assembled at the magic box.

_Emergency Meeting, and Giles sounded freaked on the phone..._Xander thought as he rubbed his hands together for warmth.

_Winter must be kicking in early this year...I hope that's a nature, not some demonic snow God or anything. _He mused.

Anya was fidgeting with the bottom of her denim jacket, trying to line the ends of the zipper together unsuccessfully and growing frustrated at her inability to do so. _Still hasn't got the hang of those hey. _He thought a bit nostalgically. _She's hot when she's annoyed. _A half-smile slid over his face. The sort of suppressed smile a man feels shame in showing, after all he did leave her at the altar, and she...well things were complicated now.

Buffy was standing, as if ready for action. Studying each of the individuals in the room intently. Xander wondered what she was looking for.

"So, what's this about?" Amy asked loudly when Buffy's eyes found her. Almost too loudly for such a small room and so few people. Xander thought she seemed...edgy, and more importantly Tara seemed quite. Very quite. And not in her normal "inner calm" kinda way. Xander was concerned immediately. Tara wasn't one for over-dramatics, if she seemed different there was a reason for it, and he trusted her judgment enough to know that reason meant trouble.

He then considered Amy, she was right to wonder why they were there. Lately things had been uneventful. The only real bad guys were some group of nerds playing immature pranks on Buffy. Admittedly, some of these verged on dangerous but compared to Hell God's, Initiatives and giant doomsday snakes, it was child's play.

"Buffy and I have been talking and well..." Giles begun in a hesitated tone.

Xander's body grew tense, this sounded important. The way Giles was carefully selecting his words meant this was a big deal.

"It would seem...it may be possible, that were in an alternate reality...again" Giles added the 'again' as if it was an afterthought.

The air seemed to stiffen and Xander had a terrible taste in his mouth, _like acid, _he thought. Suddenly everything seemed illusory. And he found himself doubting the most basic notions, deceived by irrelevant facts, questioning it all.

* * *

**[{-..{(TARA)}..-}]**

The energy in the room changed the moment Giles muttered those words "alternate reality". She could feel it shifting around her, buzzing and crackling, thick in her lungs.

"Dark magic." Tara spoke the realization as she had it. She knew what this was. She had felt it before. _Wait? When? When have I felt it?_ Tara dismissed the thought. All eyes spun to her.

"It's a spell." She whispered in an ominous tone. The phrase resonated through the space.

"Vengeance spell." Anya added quietly, Tara guessed Anya could sense the residual energy of a wish around them.

All eyes found a new target as Anya met their gazes defensively.

"Well it wasn't me!" She exclaimed.

"Oh, here's something confusing and not yet with explanation. Let's all just blame the newly demonic girl why don't we! " She hissed.

"Wait all of you were just keeping it a secret that you knew we were under some mystic mo-go until now?" Xander was confused.

"Don't be an idiot Harris." Anya rolled her eyes.

"No I'm with Xander here, if you guys sensed some kind of major tempering of the Wicca variety why didn't anyone else say anything?" Buffy was suspicious.

"I didn't know." Tara paused and then looked at the faces listening intently to her words.

" None of us did... probably an inherent cloaking device." Tara suggested.

"Most alternate realities come with one." Anya added helpfully with an enthusiastic nod.

"Well is it still there? Are we still cloaked?" Buffy asked.

"No silly, that's the whole point, if you aware of it, it's not effective. Just the fact that we're discussing the possibility of the cloak means it's not cloaking, obviously." Anya stated bluntly and Buffy cringed.

"Not that obviously." Buffy defended.

"Anya's quite right Buffy, it appears that we are no longer under the influence of such a device."

"Ignorance is bliss." Xander said lightly, but there was a tinge of bitterness lurking below the surface of the statement.

Tara didn't like this at all. Who knows what the world was meant to be like. What if it wasn't better? What if it was worse...would that matter? What if they preferred this world? What if they couldn't go back? What about...

"Scarlet." Amy said loudly.

Tara face shot straight to her girlfriend in horror.

_Please no._

"It's gotta be her right?

_Please please please please no._

"I mean come on guys, it's not like this is left field. Who do we know that doesn't belong? Is stuck in the wrong place? What about this world doesn't make sense?"

_She makes sense. She makes everything make sense. _And Tara remembered when her Mother died, she remembered pushing everyone away, she remembered trying to run from it all. On the night after the funeral she ran away from home, she didn't tell anyone where she was going, she never wanted to be found again. And Scarlet followed her.

Tara had been shoving old photos into a tattered old backpack and Scarlett was just standing there in the corner of her room, watching her curse and throw frames at the wall and retrieve pictures from between the shards of glass. Sobbing all along.

"Scar just leave me alone!" Tara had yelled at her. Scarlet flinched at each sudden movement but held her ground.

"Where are you going?" Scarlet asked simply.

"Doesn't matter." Tara swung the bag over her shoulders and stuffed a wad of cash into her pocket. And it really didn't.

"Just tell me where and I'll go." Scarlet said standing in the doorway with her arms crossed to block the way out. Tara was upset, angry at everything and now also infuriated that the ghost girl she'd found in the library three months ago was so adamantly refusing to let her go.

"Get out of my way." Tara yelled.

No response.

"Scar I mean it, move." Tara half cried half screamed. Her Dad and brother had went out hunting after the funeral, Tara figured it was to distract themselves...maybe to make them feel more powerful, in control, strong. Tara didn't feel any of those things, and Scarlet wasn't moving.

"Where are you going?" The red-head demanded.

"I don't no! I don't care! Now get the hell out of my doorway! I didn't ask you to be here! I don't want you to be here! Just get out of my way and leave me the hell alone! "

Scarlet shook her head with such stubborn determination that Tara screamed.

"Aggrh! Fine have it your way!" Tara yelled and walked right through the ghost in the doorway. She ran down the stairs tears streaming down cheeks and gasping between sobs as he sprinted out the front door and along the road. She couldn't stop crying. She was crying about a hundred things all at once. She was alone, her mum was in the ground, she couldn't do this, couldn't breathe. And at that moment she could feel Scarlet's aurora pull against and twist up in her own, and as she ran she waited for the connection to sever. She knew it would hurt, it was already hurting.

_Gone, everything's gone. I'm alone._

It was then that Tara heard panting that wasn't her own, and she looked over her shoulder and there was Scarlet running after her, she was quite close, but as her footsteps didn't crunch on the gravel Tara hadn't even realized until she was right on her heals.

"Go away Scar!" Tara sobbed, she knew she sounded like a child, but she didn't really care. She was seventeen and her mum was dead. That was really all she cared about.

Scarlet kept running.

"I mean it Scarlet!" No response. And Tara couldn't be bothered yelling at her anymore so she just picked up the pace and pushed on.

By the time it was night Tara was exhausted, she found an old playground, climbed up to the highest platform and wrapped a blanket around herself. Scarlet was still there, clutching her legs to her chest and leaning against the slide. The redheads eyes were pink as if she had been crying but she wasn't anymore.

"I don't have another blanket so you should just go home and get warm."

Scarlet shook her head, rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath.

"What was that?" Tara was just raring to fight something.

"Can't get warm. Don't live anywhere." Scarlet replied with more attitude then Tara had ever seen from the usually sweet natured girl. At this Scarlet stuck her arm right though Tara's chest waving it back and forth forcefully as a demonstration.

"See. Literally not here." She said bitterly.

Tara flinched. She'd forgotten. In amongst all the pain and fear she managed to feel wounded by the ghosts bluntness. She watched the redhead move back to the slide where she had leaned previously and curl into herself again. Scarlet had never done something like that before, she'd always avoided being close enough to touch. And now that her back was turned Tara wished she could see the other girls eyes to gauge how much damage she had done in treating her so poorly this afternoon.

"Sorry." Tara whispered. She meant it. She meant it about yelling and running and being rude and forgetting but most of all she meant it about walking straight through her best-friend as if she was nothing but air.

"Don't mention it." She heard Scarlet answer.

"I d-didn't mean too, I'm not trying t-to..."

Those big green eyes met blue and melted Tara into a puddle. Scarlet was crying again.

"Tara, I know. I know you. We're okay, we'll always be okay. It's just...not a good day" Scarlet said offering the sweetest most adorable smile, it looked out of place on tear-stained cheeks. A gentle sob escaped Tara's mouth before she had a chance to stop it and Scarlet came close.

"Shhh Tare" she whispered looking helplessly at the crying girl.

"Please don't cry. Now is when I'd grab your hand and squeeze...and then I'd lean up and kiss your forhead. And... please don't cry...and I'd give you a hug and...um..." Scarlet was panicking but Tara managed a smile through the tears.

"What kind of hug? She asked, happy to be humored.

"An ultra-comforting one. Like the kind that fixes absolutely every problem in the entire world in one moment. And makes you feel braver, warmer and at peace. And takes away all the pain that you've ever felt and turns it into rainbows and butterfly wings..."

"What happened to the rest of the butterfly? Like the body and the antennas?" Tara teased

"Oh well that's what the hugs going to transform all your worries into, see you completely jumped the gun there, and now my stories just all over the place, its narrative chaos!" Scarlet babbled desperate to lighten the mood and Tara smiled.

"You should get some sleep." Scarlet said quietly.

"Not really in the mood." Tara said sadly.

"I could tell you a story...A really good one. With happy-endings, unbeatable heroes ,the whole lot." Scarlet offered. Tara honestly didn't think it could help, but nodded all the same. She liked that Scarlet was there. She made her feel warmer, made the air smell like strawberries, made her feel safe.

Scarlet was re-telling her version of the _The Hunchback of Notre-Dame_, which varied greatly from the original, as she had only ever read one page of the book. Apparently she found it open in the library, but was unable to turn the page, thus she had to improvise on the storyline a little. In her rendition Quasimodo wasn't actually physically deformed, he'd been cursed by gypsies in his infancy so that he appeared that way. And Esmeralda fell madly in love with him despite his lumpiness, and they worked together to break the spell. Tara decided not to tell Scarlet what actually happened, her version was better anyway. Before she realized she was drifting Tara was asleep. Maybe it was from physical exertion, or emotional exhaustion or even the soothing sound of Scar babble away into the night, maybe it was all those things combined, but that was the first time she slept since her mother passed.

When she woke it was quite, and she was cold, and the floor of the playground was hard and stiffened her muscles. Then she heard the quite whispering of Scarlet's voice humming in the background, and felt at ease.

"...and Buffy said it was probably to do with the hell mouth again, you know, if it turns girls invisible then why couldn't it have done this to me. She's seems nice, Buffy that is. She's a little guarded...but I think that's probably more to do with the fact that I'm potentially evil. Xander says that if I was evil I would've come onto him by now." She chuckled, and then her mood shifted.

"And then Amy, you know Amy right, apparently her Mum went all Sabrina to try and relive the good old days. She thinks it's magic and that if I just let it take me then I'll be normal again. Even if she's right I don't know how to do that. I don't feel like I have powers or anything. She says I'm dark magic. Says she can sense it, sense my power. But told me not to tell. I promised her I wouldn't and I don't think this really counts, she probably meant I just couldn't tell conscious people but just didn't specify. I wish I could tell you things, like I'm scared, you know? I'm scared cause if I'm some big dark evil not, how did I get this way? What on earth was I before that someone turned me into some harmless little ghost girl? Who was I?" She shook her head.

"Anyway enough with my identity crisis, this is no time for self-evaluation. This is time for keeping watch. This is Sunnydale, there's bound to be vampires and demons and monsters with slobbery jaws...are monsters and demons the same thing? No...ones demonic and ones...monstrous. Right? So I'm thinking if I see something I'll scream really loud, and then you'll wake up, and then you run towards the houses, try to get someone to let you in, and I'll run towards the woods. Every good beastie knows you follow the one heading away from the people right? Hopefully I'll be able to distract it long enough for you to get somewhere safely...you know before it realizes that I'm not really anything worth chasing."

It suddenly dawned on Tara that Scarlet was trying to protect her. That's why she wouldn't let her leave without telling her where she was going, that's why she was running after her all afternoon and that's why she was awake, babbling away, at some ridiculous hour in the morning. She cared. Tara smiled and decided that Mrs Summer's might let her stay over at Buffy's for a few nights until she was ready to go home.

"You think it's Scarlet?" Buffy's voice dragged Tara out of her thoughts.

* * *

**{[-{(AMY)}-]}**

Amy nodded attempting to stay nonchalant.

_How the hec did they go from, mysterious dream, to alternate reality based in dark magic, probably a wish, in the space of ten minutes?! This is getting out of control._ Amy was getting nervous, she hadn't meant to pull Willow into the equation but she figured if she need the girl to feel alienated and what better way than to blame her for the reality shift.

Beside's this could definitely work in her favor. She was sure if they attempted exorcism the exposure to the black magic would push the redhead over the threshold and into the darkness. That was all Amy wanted, that's what this was all about. Helping Willow submit to her own power. But suddenly Amy wished she wasn't wearing the black pendant around her neck as some sort of token to be flaunted shamelessly. The Scooby's were better then she had anticipated, she should be more careful.

"But she's been around for like three years. Wouldn't it be someone new?" Buffy was asking.

Amy slid her hand subtly around the chain of the gold necklace and undid the clasp, dropping the pendent into her lap.

"Not necessarily. I mean when you think about it this reality effects our thoughts, our memories, everything. It'd be foolish to trust something as insignificant as time of acquaintance." Anya was being mildly obnoxious in her response.

* * *

**[{[...{[(BUFFY)]}...]}]**

Buffy knew where this was going. And it wouldn't be the first time that they accused Scarlet of whatever mysterious-occurrence was going down in Sunnydale. She was unexplainable. Couldn't be trusted, not by the slayer at least.

"So hypothetically if it's our resident ghost-girl what's the fix? How do you kill a ghost? She's already dead right?" Xander was trying to progress this towards a solution.

Buffy's eyes found Tara's, she looked tense and if Buffy focused she could hear how erratic her pulse was becoming. It was then she noticed that Tara was most likely silent because she was speechless. Blue eyes were screaming for Buffy to make them stop. Buffy gave a gentle nod of comradeship. She may not trust the ghost, but she was definitely fond of her, more than fond, she was a friend. For three years Scarlet hadn't done anything that suggest otherwise. She followed Buffy on patrol, kept her from being too lonely. It was a relief to have someone around who couldn't get hurt, and she was helpful too, she'd slide through the wall of a crypt and tell Buffy how man vamps they were dealing with. On the rare occasion that Buffy was injured she'd run and get help. In honesty the slayer had come to rely on her. Especially after her mother died. Scarlet was so good with Dawn, she'd hear them talking all through the night, and sometimes the ghost would sit with Buffy, just to be there, to help her be quite. Right now as they were having this conversation Scarlet and Dawn were probably sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by text books, joking about trigonometry, or the Rasputin's beard..that's what they'd been doing when she left the house that evening.

"Exorcism." Amy suggested simply. But the weight of the word was heavy in the air and it dragged all eyes to her.

"It's a simple enough process." Amy explained casually.

"Well then it's settled, let's go exercise us a dead-ginger." Xander joked and Anya rolled her eyes.

"Amy what you're talking about doing is not something to be discussed lightly, there are consequences to exposing oneself to that sought of darkness, there are forces to be respected." Giles interceded wisely.

Buffy was glad Giles was there. She may not revere his opinion like she once had but he helped the maintain order of things. Kept her grounded.

"It needs to be done Giles." Amy's voice was confrontational. The awkward silence that followed lasted only a moment.

"It can't be her. It can't..." Tara whispered.

_She's not going to keep this together. _Buffy thought as she flew to Tara's rescue.

"...because she's not right. If it was her, if this was her reality then wouldn't she...belong? Wouldn't she be normal, or rich, or powerful or anything? But she's not. She's sad, and floaty and lost..." Buffy trailed off realising that this was actually a fair point only after she said it. She noticed a shagged breath leave Tara's lips in relief and contemplated how close the two of them really had become over the years.

"So if anything it's anti-Scarlet," Anya chimed in cheerfully. Probably a little too cheerfully for the situation. Buffy barely register Amy stand and leave the shop until the bell on the door jingled behind her. Amy had a habit of storming off, but this was different...Buffy thought. _Not storming out she was...sneaking out. _Buffy looked up at Tara who was oblivious to her girlfriends absence.

"I tend to agree with Anya here, if anything it suggests this reality disadvantages the girl...Oh that's a curious thought..." Giles was obviously having a thought, you could see the cogs turning as he walked to a bookshelf and ran his fingers over the spines of ancient texts.

"Oh I really am the most dim-witted pathetic excuse for a.." he muttered to himself as he pulled a leather-bound book from its place and lay it on the table, flicking purposely through its faded pages.

"Ok Giles, mind bringing the rest of us along with you on this brainwave or is it a solo expedition?" Buffy asked as the Watcher traced his fingers over the page he had selected, searching for something specific.

Giles looked at the others who had moved closer to the round table.

"We just assumed that she was a ghost, even though she didn't fit that description at all! For goodness sake she has no memory of her past! A ghost sole existence relies on u having to resolve their life, their death, their memory!" Giles seemed frustrated at himself for not realizing this earlier.

"I thought we settled on some good old post traumatic stress." Xander offered ruefully.

"It made sense then..." Tara whispered.

"It's the bloody cloak!" Giles realized as he removed his glasses.

"Which means that whatever's happening, whoever's used dark magic to alter our perceptions, they didn't want us looking into the reason Scarlet, or whoever she really is, came to be the way she is today." Giles concluded.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6: Strawberries

**A/N: I'm a little nervous about this chapter so p****lease let me know if you love it, hate it or just wish I'd do something different. There's two parts.**

**Thoughts: Italics. **

**Perspective: Brackets. When in Willow's perspective she refers to herself as Scarlet because she doesn't know who she is...yet.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, I'm just writing them a way out of death and destruction.**

* * *

_Previously on Cobwebs and Silk..._

"Whatever's happening, whoever's used dark magic to alter our perceptions, they didn't want us looking into the reason Scarlet, or whoever she really is, came to be the way she is today." Giles concluded.

* * *

**Chapter 6: Strawberries **

PART ONE:

**[{:(...[{(AMY)}]...):}]**

Amy was rushing down the dark streets of Sunnydale, she needed to find Willow. That's why she had crept out of the Scooby meeting.

_Huh...deja vu._ She thought as she hugged her jacket closer. It had only been two days since she made a desperate wish right on these streets. And now look where she was. She was so close, the exorcism idea wasn't going to work, not without Tara's help, but Willow was vulnerable, she just had to get to her first. It was that simple now. She just needed to keep Willow away from the others long enough to show her how good it felt to give in. How seductive black ink pooled in the palms of your hands radiating with endless possibilities felt that moment before you let the magic spark from your fingertips.

_Willow always wanted the darkness for herself... Willow craved it like a gasping man craves breath... how could you not? It was ice cold water trickling down burning flesh._

Amy scratched the back of her neck without even thinking, an insistent niggling had began to taunt the sensitive skin below her hairline.

_I'll give her a taste of the magic..._Amy thought as she strode further down a familiar alley.

* * *

**{[...{[(TARA)]}...]}**

"How long?" Xander asked, there was dread in his voice. They all knew what he was afraid of, because they feared it together. How much time had passed while they remained oblivious to the fraudulent nature of the lives they were living.

"Well that's hard to say really. Judging that Buffy had this dream yesterday morning I think we can safely assume that this may also have been the onset of the spell...I for one remember a curious thought I had as I woke yesterday...almost like I was disorientated..." at their stares he continued "I was surprised I wasn't in England." He finished.

"You're in England? In the real world you're not here? " Anya asked quietly.

"Oh I was surprised it was so cold!" Xander blurted out.

"You're supposed to be in England too?" Anya again, Tara thought she could hear uneasiness in the question.

"No I just...maybe it's suppose to be summer..." Xander hesitated.

"Or maybe your suppose to grow a pair." Anya retorted a little spitefully.

"Ok you two, enough. We're decided then, someone did some dark magic slash vengeance wish thingo around yesterday morning." Buffy was clarifying.

"Someone who appears to be linked to Scarlet." Giles added.

Tara was having troubles concentrating. All she could think about was red hair and green eyes.

_She could be real, she could be normal._ She thought.

_She could be touchable._

And Tara yearned to touch her. Goosebumps tingled her skin inside and out at the thought of it. But she was always out of reach, always broken-space lost under fingertips. _Ever the mystery girl._

"Buff you said you kinda remembered her didn't you? After your dream?" Xander asked and Buffy nodded slowly.

Then no one spoke. It was the lull that comes when all known information is out in the open but no clear solution presents itself.

"Tara, do you know where Amy went?" Buffy asked after the silence became eerie and started to get to her.

Tara shook her head, it was only then she'd noticed the other witch was gone...she couldn't help feel relieved.

"She's brought up exorcism at coffee yesterday...we've never talked about it before. Then she said it again tonight." She offered quietly. Tara was breathing slowly and realised she'd been holding her breath the entire conversation they'd had earlier. Only moments ago she had felt the gut-wrenching urge to vomit and had only remained composed by grinding her teeth together and attempting to meditate.

"I don't like the idea of her out there alone. I'm gonna go find her, maybe do a quick patrol." Buffy said.

"Can you pop in at my house and check on Dawn? You can sleep in Mum's old room if you want to stay over." Buffy suggested.

"Of course." Tara answered in genuine kindness. It wasn't out of the norm for Tara to stay at the Summer's, especially after Joyce's passing. She'd become notorious for pancake breakfasts and singing in the shower.

"If I find Amy I'll bring her back there with me." Buffy said as she walked out the Magic Box door.

* * *

**[{..[{(SPIKE)}]..]}**

Spike sore Buffy stride out of the Magic Box on a mission. Gripping the cigarette he'd been smoking between his teeth he jogged after her.

"B-o-uffy!" he tried to call out but the cigarette muffled his words and promptly fell from his lips and onto the damp pavement.

"Shit!" he cursed loudly.

"Leave me alone Spike." She muttered.

"Come on pet, I know you and I have had our differences. But I've got this itch that I can't quite scratch without some assistance." Spike flicked his tongue suggestively.

"Did you see where Amy was going?" Buffy asked bluntly while increasing her pace.

_Still mad at me for the run in with the vengeance demon I suppose. Slayer always knew how to hold a grudge._

"Not too interested in her right now." He said. Buffy stopped walking long enough to slam him into the brick wall beside them. Spike found the fiery expression in her eyes arousing.

"Feisty!" he chuckled

"Spike, we've been over this, either help me or get the hell outa town." Buffy spat as she half dropped half shoved him to the road.

Something in her tone convinced Spike that it would take more than his usual charm to win Buffy back this time, maybe she'd really meant it when she said she'd never touch him again. He shook his head, no use in thinking like that, he'd help find the girl, get back in the slayers good books.

"Aright, alright, rat girl went this way." He said taking the lead. Amy always reminded him of a rat. Something about the way she moved her hands and her inability to sit still.

* * *

**[{..[(TARA)]...}]**

Tara made her way onto the Summer's porch. The kitchen light glowed warm through the window outside and she could hear Dawn's excited voice telling, what seemed like a humorous story, in a very animated voice. A warm lopsided smile covered Tara's face as she heard Scarlet chuckling in the background.

_They sound like their having a good time. _She thought.

And then a shiver ran right down her neck to the base of her spine. _Exorcism._ Only twenty minutes ago she was in the Magic Box listening to talk of "fixing" the ghost problem. _Breath Maclay, Breath._ She shuttered and lent her head on the Summer's front door, it felt heavy with exhaustion. She forced herself to inhale steadily and exhale slowly. She could feel the cool of the timber door pressing against her forehead as she took another couple of steady breaths. _They don't even know how close it got too...stop it Tara. Breath remember, breathe _she thought to herself.

Another rumble of laugher exploded through the air and she felt he lips pull into a smile. _She's okay, Dawn's okay. Everything's okay. _With that she lifted her head, put on a brave face and gently pushed the front door open.

Dawn and Scarlet were both in hysterics as they sat at the kitchen table, textbooks and lined paper scattered over it's surface. Neither of them noticed Tara's presence so she simply leant against the doorframe and basked in the wonderful warmth of their laughter, it was such a relief compared to the seriousness of the day.

"Your totally making this up!" Scarlet teased with the hugest grin as she shook her head_._

"Am not! I swear it's all true! And Janice just has this look on her face like she's so freaked she's gonna pee her pants! And I'm just standing there!" Dawn protested which elicited another roar of laugher.

"I mean what was I suppose to do?! I couldn't just nod along and be like, yep Mr. Peters and I are totally going steady." Dawn chuckled.

"Well of course not. Clearly your only option was to publicly exclaim that this was a fallacy in front of the entire assembly" Scarlet teased in a mock serious tone. Tara was laughing softly at the comment.

"My thoughts exactly. OH fallacies! That's what my English papers about!" Dawn started to shuffle the papers in front of her as their laugher faded into smiles.

That smile, Scarlet's smile. Tara was certain it was the most beautiful thing in the entire universe. The way her cheeks turned pink, dimples creased, eyes lit up like the sun. Tara smiled _It's perfect, it's…_Scarlet's eyes lifted and sore Tara casually lent against the kitchen wall.

"What's this I hear about sleeping with Mr. Peters?" Tara asked.

"Our Dawnie's been making time with young hot Geology professors." Scarlet joked.

"No she has not! And you better shut up before Buffy gets home, she will not hesitate to kill me. You've seen her; kill now, discern gossip from truth later." Dawn was still giggling as she spoke.

"She patrolling?" Dawn asked Tara.

Tara nodded.

"Homework?" Tara asked back.

"Totally all over it. Scars may not remember her own middle name but she's got trigonometry tutoring down." Dawn smiled. The fact that not one of them realize that technically Scarlet didn't even know her first name was a testament to their jollity.

* * *

**[{:(...[{(AMY)}]...):}]**

As Amy turned a dimly lit street corner a flickering streetlight caught her attention. The casual observer might blame the lighting fixture or the local energy company but Amy was no casual observer. She saw how the bulb pulsated erratically against the road and grinned.

_Disturbance in electrical currency...looks promising._

She moved quickly towards it and what had started as a persistent nagging at the back of her neck was now an unrelenting twinge that demanded attention. It spread to the underside of her arms to her back and around her chest. Calling her closer. A sirens song.

Amy's hand travelled into her jacket pocket and found the gold necklace with a black stone buried deep within it. When her hands met the chain she pulled back instinctually and hissed. It was hot, and it zapped Amy's skin like lightning. She dragged her eyes from the mysterious light when the heat burned through the jacket.

"Argh!" Amy yelled when she saw the garment had spontaneously burst into flame, shedding the coat quickly as it dissolved from fire to ash. And when it was nothing but a pile of dust the pendant rolled with the curvature of the road towards a nearby drain as if it weighed more than a mere rock on a chain.

Amy gasped as the fell to her knees snatching the necklace just before it was lost to the sewers.

"That's an interesting way to treat my trinket." A deep voice purred.

Amy's eyes shot up to see a tall, broad shouldered man, who may have been handsome if not for the scars on his face and the unnatural discolouration of one of his eyes. His hair long, greasy and dishevelled. A small stone sat high on his chest held by a leather cord around his neck. And he regarded Amy the rat, kneeling in the gutter a glitter of gold suspended from her fingers with a look of both amusement and contempt.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you to care for your belongings?" his voice rasping within his throat.

"Rack." Amy was bewildered.

"I mean, a gift is a gift, that use to mean something. Should've known you'd be scampering about, chasing your tail, running around and around your little plastic wheel to forget about the cage." He articulated his words as if he was reading a children's poem.

"Give it back to me. Give me my trinket." He held out a palm.

Amy rose to her feet clutching her hand behind her back in defence of the ornament.

'It's mine. You can't have it. I found it in my mother's room."

"In the bedside draw she kept under lock and key, under the pearls and the broach in the shape of a peacock." Rack interrupted in a sultry tone.

Amy was struck with stunned silence.

"How did you?" her voice was small.

"Your mother tasted like cheap perfume and vodka." His grey eye flickered silver and a hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his battered cheek.

"She was alot like you. Never sore the big picture. Always in it for the praise. Instant gratification and all that." His low voice hummed.

Amy stood unmoving and silent, she couldn't tell if that was by her own doing or Rack's.

"Now, where's my strawberry?" he purred.

* * *

**PART TWO**

**[{{..[(WILLOW)]..}}]**

This evening had been one of those rare times in Scarlet's life where she felt wonderful. If there had been anyone else around they would've seen the absent minded grin she had plastered on her face. It was that sort of smile that refuses to budge even after the night grows old.

She was laying on her stomach across a tasteful Persian rug on the floor of Mrs Summers old room listening to the sound of water running in the nearby en suite. Tara was in the shower. Scarlet's smile widened.

_One wall. One wall between us._ She was giddy.

Dawn and Tara had made themselves spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and Tara said she'd tell Scarlet her secret ingredient when the Scobby's found a way to establish her physical being again. Everyone had stopped talking like that years ago, and it made Scarlet feel blissfully hopeful.

After the other two ate dinner they watched TV together, Tara braided Dawn's hair and they all laughed their heads off when Dawn started doing her best impression of Renée Zellweger's pout as the Jerry Maguire movie credits rolled. They'd only managed to catch the last twenty minutes, but Dawn said that was the best part anyway.

Scarlet had watched Tara's fingers weave intricately through Dawn's hair as she braided it down the teenagers back. She found her brain attempting to analyse the patterns and knots and put them into an algorithm that explained each step of the process. She smiled as she accepted that, just like everything Tara did, there was no formula that made it perfect, it simply was. A raw organic flow that was incorruptible, unexplainable and overwhelmingly pure.

Tara's soft voice spilled through the wall and hung lightly in the air and Scarlet felt her body buzzing. _She's singing_ she thought_. _Scarlet slid soundlessly onto her feet and crouched near the en suite wall, close enough to hover her ear beside its surface. She closed her eyes and felt the music, listening to the delicate melody, afraid that if she moved ever so slightly the treasure might break.

_Mustn't move _it would be so easy to fall through the wall and into the bathroom.

_Mustn't move._ She took a deep breath and steadied herself; it would be easy to lose her balance with her eyes close like this.

Scarlet found it difficult to avoid thoughts about Tara's proximity and lack of clothing_. Stop it._

Tara's fair skin that peaked under mid-drifts. _Stop it!_

Small bumps under Tara's night shirts that hinted where nipples might be. _Stop it!_

Tara's milky thighs that teased under splits in skirts. _Stop it!_

_ENOUGH! You can't have her, you can never have her, you will never have her. You're not real! You're not here! Ghost girl! Ghost girl! Ghost Girl!_

Scarlet let out a shuttering breath and clenched her eyes shut tighter.

Tara was still singing gently. Scarlet relaxed her eyelids and let the voice swallow her completely.

_She sounds like an angel. _She smiled, but there was melancholy beneath it.

Scarlet wanted many things that life had never given her. She wanted to feel morning sun on her skin. She wanted to know if she left anyone behind waiting for her three years ago. She wanted to hear her real name called out as if it mattered. She wanted to taste spaghetti and meatballs with the secret ingredient. She wanted a normal life, where she could warm the chill in her bones, comfort the people she love and live whatever way she saw fit.

But above all she wanted Tara Maclay. She wanted to touch every inch of her. Breath every breathe with her. Hold every part of her, and cherish it forever.

She could never get close enough to that girl.

* * *

**[{[.{(ANYA)}.]}]**

_Just me and Xander...here. Just the two of us. Me and Xander._ Anya was very aware as she locked the door to the Magic Box that her ex fiancé waited, she let out a frustrated sigh as she fiddled with the lock. Last time they'd been here she was yelling and he had an axe.

"Why didn't you leave with Tara?" Any asked accusingly. She hadn't even thought it before the words tumbled out of her mouth.

He shrugged as she tucked the keys into her handbag.

"You're making me uncomfortable."

He nodded. She started walking away but he followed as if they were heading to the same destination.

"You're going the wrong way, remember. Your staying that way." She pointed across the street but he didn't leave.

"Arn I know where I live." He said in a tone that implied this fact was obvious.

"Then why are you going that way? I'm not letting you come home with me. If you think you can just pad along after me like some mangy stray that needs a..."

"Arn, I'm really not looking for an invite, just making sure you get there." He interrupted.

"I don't need you to protect me. I can look after myself. I was doing it for a thousand years before you, and I can do it again." She said defensively. She still felt uncomfortable. But it was more because she thought he was sweet, but you know, he promised they'd spend their lives together then left her without warning sobbing in front of a hundred people. And now of course she'd slept with Spike. She hadn't meant too, it just...she was sad. And he was there. And now she was all very uncomfortable.

"Go away Xander." She muttered.

"I promise, the second you're behind doors, I'm gone." He answered.

_Oh he doesn't know. _She was a demon now, a vengeance demon, probably one of the evils he was worried might attack her on this lonely road. They were both quite for a few miles.

As she reached her doorstep she turned around to see him lingering close by on the side of the road.

"Look, here now. Safe and sound." She gestured to the apartment and then gave a strange little curtsey.

"You can go away now." She said bluntly while shifting he weight from side to side.

He nodded but kept looking at her, studying her.

"What?" she asked defensively. _He knows._

"Do you think we're like this? In the real world?" the question threw her off guard.

"I mean it's all so messed up... What if it was all the spell? What if we are just this normal happy couple. Arguing about in-laws and putting down the toilet seat?" He continued and Any just stared at him.

"I just...I can't imagine myself doing that to you, you know? Why would I do that? It doesn't make any sense." He trailed off looking at his shoes.

Anya just looked at him.

"I mean I kinda wish this was all just some bad dream. And I'll wake up and be like, thank God, I'm not that coward who freaked out and just left her there. And that none of this ever happened. Wouldn't that just be... " He was being uncharacteristically serious; he'd been uncharacteristically serious for about a month now.

"Goodnight Xander." Anya didn't really want him to keep talking. It was hurting.

"Night." He said quietly as he gave nod, and turned to walk away.

Anya watched him, slouched shoulders and hands buried in pockets, make his way down the street.

_His gonna get himself killed walking alone in Sunnydale at this time of night. _She tried to shake her head at the thought as she shut her front door_._

"Dam it Xander!" she mumbled as she tried to ignore the terrible clenching feeling in her stomach. She had never been as aware of his mortality the she was in that moment as she watched him walk alone down the road they both used to live on.

* * *

**[[{.{(TARA)}.}]]**

Tara decided to stay the night. Buffy still wasn't home which meant she probably hadn't found Amy yet. Tara knew she should be worried, but Amy mysteriously disappeared regularly and she was a competent enough Wicca to do some damage if she got into trouble. She was using so much magic lately that she'd probably be the one causing trouble...

Tara pushed the thought from her mind. _Not tonight._ She was with her girls, they were having fun, it was a temporary holiday from all things serious. She rinsed the conditioner from her hair under the warm spray of the shower and tried to imagine her worries washing away in the water. Her mother use to say that if you imagine putting your troubles in a bucket and then offer it out to float away in the sea it could give you clarity of mind. Tara didn't think Amy would fit in a bucket.

She sung quietly to herself as she turned the water off, dried her hair and threw an oversized t-shirt she'd won in junior high over her head.

When she entered the room she saw Scarlet perched awkwardly on the edge of the double bed and Tara wondered what it would be like to sit there unable to feel the sheets underneath you.

"Good shower?" Scarlet asked politely.

"It was actually." She replied as she ran a brush through her hair. It wasn't a surprise to see Scarlet appear out of nowhere at the Summer's. Tara had lived here a while after Joyce's death and the little ghost seemed to be everywhere. Tara remembered hearing Buffy sobbing one night in her room, but when she stood at the door she realized her friend wasn't alone but talking to a pale redhead. If Scarlet had been solid Buffy's head would have rested in her lap as she cried, but rather lay through it and onto the chair the ghost sat. Scarlet kept saying "it's okay" over and over again and Tara could see her hovering her hand over the blonds shoulders as if longing to comfort her. Tara set the brush on the dresser.

"I like it when you sing" Scarlet offered a small smile. There was sadness behind green eyes, and it made Tara's heart break a little. She decided against enquiring about the cause of Scarlet's downhearted expression, she didn't want to bring up pain, not on her holiday from all things serious. Instead she flicked of the lights made her way around the bed, pulled the covers down on her side and climbed in. Ever since Tara lived with her farther Scarlet often slept beside her to help her sleep. Scarlet would whisper to her in a quiet voice, telling stories, sharing secrets, and Tara would finally get to stop pretending everything was okay.

Now that Tara was dating Amy this tradition was harder to maintain.

_I've missed this_. Tara thought. It had been over a week since Scarlet had stayed over, which meant a week that Tara didn't sleep soundly.

"Are you okay?" Scarlet's asked sweetly, and Tara looked into big pools of green.

_She looks so concerned about me._ Tara thought, and she wanted to kiss her just for caring enough to stare at her like that. She always wanted to kiss her. _Shouldn't think like that. _

Tara nodded letting blue eyes melt into green.

"I don't believe you." Scarlet whispered quietly.

Tara smiled and closed her eyes, everything smelt sweet, her tongue tasted like strawberries and her whole body relaxed into Scarlets energy. She opened her eyes.

"How about now?"

* * *

**[{(BUFFY)}]**

_Still no Amy. I'm starting to wonder if Spike is just leading me round in circles._ Buffy thought as she looked at her watch _GREAT 2:57AM. _

They were in the cemetery, again. Buffy was sure they had already walked around these headstones. She remembered seeing one where someone had left flowers in a boot. She couldn't decide whether it was resourceful, a private joke or just plain weird.

Spike stopped suddenly and smelt the air. Buffy rolled her eyes, this wasn't the first time Spike had dramatically sniffed the air tonight, and doubted it would be the last.

"Wait..." He was thinking.

"Which way Spike?" She asked impatiently.

"Blood." He stated. Buffy froze, sure Amy could be a pain in the ass, but she didn't want her to be a bloody pain in the ass.

"Where is she?" She asked with urgency.

"Not the rat...it's your boy." He looked straight at Buffy and her heart doubled it's pace.

"Take me to him!" Buffy ordered, and they both broke into a sprint.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I really should be doing a million other things this afternoon, but the last 12hrs have really...well they've sucked. **

**So this ones for all you people who've ever experienced one of those days of profoundly craptactialla proportions.**

**Disclaimer: Their not mine, but the story is. **

* * *

**Chapter 7: Bad Morning**

**{[{(WILLOW)}]}**

_Tara._

She was just lying asleep beside her.

_She looks serene..._

Shifting gently under sheets, burying her cheek into a satin pillow-case.

_She never looks that peaceful anymore._

Scarlet reached her fingers to Tara's face, letting them linger between her eyes where it often creased when she was worried.

_She's always hurting for someone else._

Tara's steady breath murmuring in and out from her lips as sighs and inhalations.

_I wish the world cared for her the way she deserves to be cared for. _

Scarlet shuffled closer on the bed so that some of Tara's body was occupying the same space as her own.

_I wish it was fair to her always. _

She squeezed her eyes closed and let her head fall through Tara's.

_She makes me feel warmer._ Scarlet thought that maybe this was how it felted to be wrapped up and cuddled into soft fabric of sheets. But she couldn't know for sure, she was simply hovering over a bed frame.

_She makes me feel whole._ Scarlet pulled away to look at closed eyelids, silky hair and the gentle rise and fall of Tara's chest.

_She makes me feel everything. _

"I love you." Scarlet whispered into the dark. And it was the truth. It had been for three long years.

* * *

**[{..[{(SPIKE)}]..}]**

Spike stopped running with a sudden jerk. The trace had only been faint, and now it was gone.

"Lost him" He announced while squinting at the flickering street light in the old alley way.

"Well find him again!" Buffy demanded. Her voice echoed in the abandoned street.

"I got an idea! How bout you be blood hound, and I'll be clouded judgment." He retorted.

"Where is he?" This time she almost sounded desperate.

"We're not playing bleeding pick-a-boo under Mummy's chair Slayer, his scents all dried up. Can only smell it when it's fresh."

"That's not good enough!" Buffy screamed turning on her heel and sprinting away from him. Spike stood in the gutter watching her disappear into the night.

"I'm never gonna be good enough for you pet." He muttered.

* * *

**[{-{{[(DAWN)]}}-}]**

_It happened so quickly...it always happens so quickly. One moment you're laughing about spilling spaghetti sauce down your shirt and the next everyone's grim faces, death and destruction._ Buffy had burst through the front door at half past four in the morning yelling "Have any of you seen Xander?!"

Then two phone calls and a failed locating spell later; Anya, Tara, Scarlet, Giles Buffy and Dawn sat, stood and paced restlessly in the Summers kitchen frantically trying to come up with a plan.

Xander was missing, last sighted walking alone into vampire-infested streets of Sunnydale, and he'd lost blood...the most obvious conclusion was clear. But there seemed to be an unspoken agreement between them that no one was to mention it.

Now Anya was uncharacteristically quiet. Tara was pouring through spell after spell. Giles and Scarlet were discretely discussing dangers Xander may have passed, and what routes he may have taken. While Buffy was trying to get hold of Xander's landlord, maybe he was in his apartment sitting on his Lazyboy watching Baywatch, maybe he was fine.

And that left Dawn, sitting stiffly watching them all, wondering how she never seemed to know her place..._Maybe the role confusions to do with the whole: key, Glory, green glowy ball of energy thing. Maybe I just don't belong here..._

"They haven't seen him. I tried Amy but she's not answering her cell. Where the hell is he?!" Buffy stormed through the otherwise quite kitchen.

"If his sitting at home nursing a paper cut I am going to kill him!" She growled whilst wracking her hands through her hair and shaking her head.

"His not at home nursing a paper cut Buffy, some magical disturbance mucked up Tara's spell. Something trying to prevent us charting his essence." Anya's voice was tense.

"Well great, at least we know he didn't get bitten." Dawn added in an effort to add some optimism.

"No, not great, something has him. Something bad." Anya said pointedly.

"Something we know nothing about." Giles interjected.

"Maybe I just did the spell wrong...wouldn't be the first time. I can try it again...maybe just..." Tara was trying to fix everything on a complication.

"It was perfect. I checked the ingredients as you went, you were perfect. It should have worked." Scarlet assured.

"So were narrowing down options, I'm all with the narrowing." Dawn was trying to prevent any escalation of nervous tension. It's what Xander would do if he was here. _Well actually he'd probably joke that he should get kidnapped more often if it's going to get him this much attention_. Dawn smiled at the thought.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK. The front door. It was the kind of hurried knock that let's everyone inside know the distress of their visitor before they even know who's there.

"Buffy!" Amy's voice yelled through the banging noises of her fist.

Tara scurried from her chair to open the door.

"Buffy!" Amy gasped as she fell through the opening ungracefully, pushed past Tara and into the kitchen.

"He's got Xander!" Amy was wheezing between words.

"You know where Xander is?" Anya was on her feet already.

Amy nodded breathlessly.

"Dark warlock named Rack took him. I don't like the look of this guy Buffy, his got dark magic's spilling out of him like sweat. His bad news" Amy spoke so fast, her voice was jittering.

"What could he possibly want with Xander?" Giles enquired quite logically. Xander was not wizard nor was he any sort of enchanted being.

"Doesn't want Xander. He said it was a message for an old friend." Amy turned directly to look at Scarlet.

"Says the ghost and he have an understanding." Amy said coldly.

Dawn turned to look at Scarlet. Everyone did. She stood by the sink where she and Giles had been talking only moments ago. Giles stepped away and studied her closely. She looked like a deer in the headlights. Her eyes had managed to bulge three sizes larger and she flicked them desperately from person to person as if calling for help.

"Don't' look at her like that." Dawn blurted out but no one seemed to hear her. She wanted to protect her friend...her closet friend. She knew things about Scarlet no one else did. She knew about when Scarlet woke up three years ago. And now she knew that whatever was going on, Scarlet had no part in it. She was one of the good guys, and that was that.

Amy strode with intimidatingly precise steps towards Scarlet, Buffy stood arms folded in an aggressive stance behind her.

"He said the two of you went way back. Said you'd be happy to hear from him after all these years." Amy was encircling the little redhead as if to devour prey.

"Scar..." Tara's voice was barely audible but Scarlet looked right towards her. _I know about that too. _ Dawn thought as she watched the two of them stared across the room.

Scarlet was still. No use in denying an accusation you're not even sure is false. And everyone was waiting for her to make the next move. Waiting for her to say something, do something...anything. But she just stood still, just a deer in the headlights.

* * *

**[[{[..{(AMY)}..]}]]**

Amy lead the others through the winding streets of Sunnydale .

"This way!" she hissed as she ducked around corners and crossed over avenues. And in the darkness of early morning she let a self-satisfied grin creep over her lips whilst the others followed helplessly. She'd thought Willow would have run...slipped through walls and out of sight. Any smart person would have. But she was running with the rest of them, running back to Rack. She thought the other's would have questioned why she knew so much, or asked her where she'd been. But they trusted her blindly. If Amy had let herself feel the twang of guilt that thought evoked she may have turned back. But this wasn't about that, this was about so much more.

_So willing, so easy, so gullible, so full of mislaid pride and underserved honour. _

Amy knew how to be someone worth mentioning. You find power. And you get as close to it as humanly possible, and you do anything to keep it from slipping away from you. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Amy wanted to be corrupted.

"Over here!" she whispered loudly as she stopped under the flickering light post. She felt acid burning her tastebuds, and magic excite her cells.

"It's close..."

* * *

**[{..{(TARA)}..}]**

Tara didn't like this; she didn't like any of it.

She didn't like that few hours ago she'd been lying in bed having the greatest dream to be unexpectedly awoken to panic, chaos and mayhem. A friend in danger, gather all arms.

She didn't like the way Amy was acting, or know what to make of it. She was jittery... her aura was buzzing, a hundred tiny explosions bursting and rebuilding all at once. There was something else...what was it? Tara almost thought she could sense Amy's anticipation.

She didn't like that this was going to involve dark magic. That some unknown Warlock was blocking spells and telling them what to do, where to go, without explanation.

But most of all Tara didn't like that for the first time in three years there was someone out there who'd know Scarlet longer then she had. Who could offer Scarlet her past.

And as Amy led them into the sewers below a flickering street light Tara wished that they'd stopped and thought this through. Something was wrong. Something bad was going to happen.

"Tara..." a quiet voice called from behind her. Tara looked over her shoulder to see that Scarlet had stopped running and was being left behind. She walked back to the redhead who seemed to be frozen in her tracks.

"Scar..."

"I don't like this..." the ghost whispered.

"I know." Tara whispered.

There was a heavy silence; all that could be heard was the fading footsteps of Amy, Buffy, Dawn and Giles. And an echoed voice saying "keep up!"

"I don't think I want to know who I was...not if it leads to things like this. Not if I've done things like..."

"I know." Tara whispered.

"You'll all hate me want you. If I'm like them if..."

"Never." Tara answered resolutely. Scarlet ducked her head and smile at her feet. _I like it when I make her do that. _Tara thought. It was then that she noticed little streams of light flowing through draining vents in the sewers.

"Suns coming up..." Tara acknowledge simply.

"Promise we'll all make it out of this before it fills the sky?" Scarlet asked with a sweetly hopeful smile.

"Promise." Tara whispered with a meaningful nod. Their gaze lingered a moment before Buffy called after them and they hurried towards the others.

If Tara had known what was to become of that morning she wouldn't have promised Scarlet anything. She would've just told her to run, to run and never look back...hindsight's twenty-twenty.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8: Her name's Willow

**A/N: Thanks for all your help, I'm updating for you guys so please keep telling me what you think, outside perspective is amazing! Thoughts in italics, and a****s suggested by JustJane18 I'm loosing the point-of-view brackets. ****This chapter is pretty huge, please bare with me, it had to be written! **

**Disclaimer: The story100% my little brains doing, the characters 100% borrowed.**

* * *

**Chapter 8: Her name's Willow**

They made their way deeper and deeper into the heart of Sunnydale. _You should never dig into a hell mouth. _Giles had learnt that at the Watcher's academy. _The darkness gets thicker, the further down you go, and before you know it your in hell itself._

Now they could hear the low grumble of male voices. It was hard to judge how close they were when everything echoed around in the pipes and bounced off curved walls.

Deeper and deeper into the murky gloom. The voices grew louder and clearer the further they went. Giles was certain one of them was Xander...the angry voice...but who was the calm? _Rack. I suppose, an "old friend" of a ghost, but more to the point ,what does that mean for us?_

Amy disappeared up ahead, next Anya, then Buffy and Dawn, and when Giles reached the place they had mysteriously vanished he realized that they had simply slipped into a large alcove in the wall of the sewers, the cave opened into a chamber, and Xander was splayed across the far wall of it. _Bloodied and beaten._

The air from that side of the cavern was stale and foul._ It reeks of the black arts_. AS Tara and Scarlet joined them in the alcove Gile's wondered how he'd found such a force so alluring in his Ripper days.

* * *

Buffy suddenly wished that she hadn't let Dawn come along. This was no light entertainment, fun for the whole family. This was Xander pinned to a wall, strung up as if hung by his hands and feet but with something more sinister then chains holding him like that. A strange man faced away from them, a man who held his shoulders in a menacing posture and stood unconventionally close to Xander's face as they hissed and spat words at each other.

"You're in over your head magic man, I'm friends with the Slayer, she doesn't tend to appreciate when sadistic creeps mess with her people." Xander challenged with pride.

"Oh little man, little man." Rack purred as he backed away from Xander.

"Et plaga dolosa." He hissed.

Xander shrieked as his whole body jarred and tensed as if stabbed through the centre and when the spell release him he groaned loudly.

" Watch me tremble where I stand. " Rack purred in a disturbingly casual tone.

Anya ran out of the alcove, leaping from the small ledge, but Buffy snatched her arm with strong hands and pulled her back to safety.

"Let me go Buffy" Anya sneered, and Buffy cupped a hand over her mouth.

"You're hurting me!" Anya mumbled angrily into Buffy palm.

"Just stay put for a second while we figure out how we're going to do this." Silence hung in the darkness. All eyes lingered on Buffy in anticipation, _I don't know how we're going to do this _Buffy thought, she'd never known. Not against the Master, or the Mayor, or Adam, or Glory or the nerds that stalked her house or the illness that took her mother. She'd just been told that she was the Chosen One when she was fifteen years old and had been making it up ever since.

"I'll go." Scarlet's voice was barely audible but her statement rang out through the little cavern and chimed in Buffy's eardrums.

Scarlet's expression was resolved and she began to move forward. If she had been human she would have had to push through the crowd, but she simply walked through bodies, first Tara then Dawn then Giles then Amy then Anya then Buffy. It gave Buffy goose-bumps and she grabbed for Scarlet's fingers to stop her as she had Anya, but met nothing until her hand hit the cool damp stone of the alcove.

Scarlet stopped with her back to the others as she stood at the threshold of the hide-out.

"You should all stay here. This is my fault anyways, about time all this caught up with me..." She admitted quietly.

"No." Buffy stated. _There's no way in hell she's going out there alone._ There had been hundreds of times Scarlet had went first in sight of danger, makes sense to send the ghost...but this man was a sorcerer, he'd have other ways to hurt then fangs, daggers and claws. And he knew Scarlet...well he knew... whatever her name really was.

"Scar, you c-can't. T-t-that's n-not..." Tara struggled

Then Scarlet turned to the six shadows huddled in the sewers.

"Stop being silly..." She said gently then

"I'm untouchable, didn't you know?" and a sweet little smile spread over pale cheeks but it did nothing to hide the tremble in her voice. As she turned she nodded kindly as if to say everything was going to be alright. And without further discussion Scarlet slid silently off the alcove ledge but her feet didn't splash in the muddied water when she hit the stone floor, as she didn't weigh anything at all.

* * *

_Half a league, half a league half a league onward. Into the valley of death rode the six hundred._ Scarlet didn't know why the words came to her but as she glided further and further from her friends and into the unknown, they resonated through her mind. In truth it had been the poem Willow Rosenberge had chosen to recite in eighth grade for her verbal response final. She'd been so nervous she'd fainted and never had a chance to perform the piece, and ever since that day extreme anxiety seemed to be subconsciously coupled to the simple rhythm of it's stanzas.

_Keep going._ Scarlet urged inwardly as every cell in her body begged her to turn, to run, to save herself. _Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. _Her knees started to quiver beneath her weight, but her legs obeyed the strong command from above. _You have to keep going. _She finally had a chance to be brave, brave for Tara, brave for Dawn, brave for Buffy, she owed it to them. She indulged the poem because she could feel it eating away at her trepidation. _Storm'd at with shot and shell,__ Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell, Rode the six hundred._

Xander had seen her, there had been a momentary flash of recognition, and he was now doing his best to look in every corner of the cavern except for the one she stood nearest too. Scarlet's chest ached at the sight of the well-meaning young man hanging limp on the wall, blood seeping through his jeans and dripping from his chin. They'd never been close, but he had always been kind_. Brave for Xander_ Scarlet thought as she walked on.

"Who are you anyway?" Xander asked the man before him in an effort to draw his attention.

The stranger ignored the question as if he hadn't been addressed at all.

Scarlet focused on the light material of the man's shirt hanging from his broad shoulders. The material looked as if it had been white once, but now had been stained on stains on stains and faded seamlessly with the colour of his skin. He was looking at something small in his hand but Scarlet couldn't see what.

"What do you want with her...the ghost? " Xander enquired further.

A strangled laugh left the strangers throat, Scarlet thought it seemed patronising.

_His playing with us _she realised as Rack turned slightly and she could see him examining a gold chain with a black pendent dangling from his fingers. He held the necklace to Xander's eyelevel and swung if from side to side as if to hypnotise him.

"Her name's Willow."

* * *

Tara's whole being, every ounce of flesh, every quite thought, every strand of hair, was consumed by a single word: _Willow._

"I need her help to make good on an old debt." Rack was still talking.

_Willow._

"Great darkness, great light, there's a thing, I wouldn't want to bore you." He purred.

_Willow._

"I'm a pretty patient guy." Xander pushed as he attempted to evade his gaze from the black pendant dancing before him.

_Willow._

Rack raised his hand towards him, flexing his fingers and twisting his wrist as sparks of energy fizzle with the movement.

"We'll see about that." His voice poisoned honey.

Tara could feel Anya tense, Dawn gasp and Giles swallow, but none of that registered in her mind when she realized that the girl in the cavern was stepping forward. The red-haired ghost wasn't hiding anymore.

"Leave him alone." The quietest plead of a sound. She sounded childlike. _Willow. _

Rack let his eyes drift slowly to the pale figure behind him and smiled slightly; he didn't seem surprised in the slightest. On the contraire he seemed... satisfied. He racked his gaze shamelessly up Willow's body with a look of intense craving and Tara caught a glint of silver shimmer in his greedy expression.

"There she is." Rack sung in a low voice.

He tilted his head as he weaved towards Willow. His eyes locked intently on his subject, refusing to release her. It was the ravenous gaze of a predator, feasting on its victim.

"What has she done to you, hey sweetness? I used to feel vibes coming off you in waves, could sense you coming a mile away, but now..." he spoke painfully slow.

"...you're not much more than an aberration." he threaded his tongue between his teeth and let it slap on the roof of his mouth when he retracted it.

Rack was standing imposingly close, he ran his hand through the side of Willow's body as if to trace her shape from shoulder to hip. Tara hated it. _Get out of there Scar, run right through him and don't stop until you see the daylight.  
_

"Goes to show you can't have one without the other. Gotta give a little to take a little, I told you that once."

"I'm sorry, I don't remember." She whispered softly.

"Well no. A little rat made sure of that, always messing with things she can't handle. Isn't that right Amy?" Rack raised his voice as if to include Amy in the conversation.

"Come out, Come out wherever you are!" He bellowed and his voices echoed from wall to wall.

"You and your little friends." He chimed in an eerie tone. Tara had no doubt that the twisted man knew of their presence from the start.

Still they didn't move. Frozen with horror, frozen with shock, frozen to cope with the rapidly unraveling scene before them. They were powerless.

Rack began firing spells so quickly that their shrieks "Stop!" and pleas of "Don't" were indiscernible between the sparks.

"Ferrum!" He cast

Xander yelped

"Calcitratus!" He cast again

Xander gasped.

"Dolor!" Again

Xander writhed.

"Pertorqueo!" Again.

Xander screamed.

"STOP!" Buffy demanded. By this time all five of them had stumbled into sight. Buffy in front of the others with an aggressive stance, as if her super-strength had a chance of protecting them. Xander seemed as though he was either unconscious or in too much pain to show any signs of life. Tara's breathing was ragged, whoever this guy was, he wasn't just playing games.

"Touch him again I dare you, I will not hesitate to kill you where you stand. Human or not." Buffy spat but the statement was completely ignored.

Rack was smiling at his audience, rubbing his hands together while sparks of orange light sizzled with the friction. He directed his eyes back to Willow. It's intensity holding her still. She was all by herself, standing off to the side where Rack had last left her. Tara could see her shaking, green eyes sinking further and further into herself.

"I want to help you strawberries, I want to make you ripe." He purred

"Leave her alone." Tara heard the desperation in her tone. _Strawberries, he can taste her._ It was a strange thought considering the circumstances, she'd never admitted to anyone the sweet taste of the ghost aura and now she felt as if it had been violated. Spat out by thirsty lips.

Rack continued as if uninterrupted.

"But see I'm gonna need a favor in return, give a little, take a little, you understand don't you sweetness?" He hovered greedy hands around her face, trailing directly through space cheeks should be.

Tara was going to be sick, she was going to collapse, she couldn't watch this, she couldn't stop. It was too much. They had to get out of here, they had to get out of here now.

"You'll let them go if I stay here with you?" Willow whispered. Tara heart stopped, _we're losing her._

"That's right." he answered.

Green eyes looked back at the Scooby's huddle in the corner of the cave, the decision was already made. _No, we're not leaving without her. _But even as Tara thought it she knew it was fighting the inevitable. The whole morning, the message, the sewers, Scarlet going first, her real name. It was all leading to this.

Willow looked back to Rack and gave a decisive nod.

"That's my girl." He said through curved lips as Rack moved towards her, eyes fixed on his trophy. He lifted a large hand to her chest, a gold chain twisted between his fingers and the pendant falling through her formless body.

"Amy." He gestured she come stand by him with a flick of his head. Amy obeyed, and when she reached him he placed his spare hand on her chest. The Scooby's watched in bewilderment as their friend scurried to her master and allowed him to lay hand on her so willingly.

Tara heard Giles whisper '_good lord'_ and Dawn whimper.

"This might hurt a little." Rack craned his head backwards, inhaled deeply and shifted his fingers in anticipation.

"Reditus Tergum." immediately both hands sealed on chests with glowing sparks of energy. Amy's eyes were open and Tara could see her smiling euphorically at the sensation as her pupils dilated black and glazed over with desire. The dangling necklace slid from Racks splayed fingertips, clanging on stone much louder then one might expect from such a small trinket and Amy fell unconscious to the ground beside it.

A strangled wheeze escaped Willows throat as her chest slammed hard into warlocks palm. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her body began flailing erratically from her centre. Hands became fists, arms hyper-flexed into unnatural postures and legs failed to hold her when the connection severed abruptly landing her in a heap.

Tara heard herself scream but it was lost amongst the chaos of it all. Everything was in slow motion, then fast forward, then spinning out of control and Tara felt completely detached from her body. Giles and Anya were taking advantage of the unexpected turn of events pulling at Xander's legs while the distraction ragged on.

Rack had been thrown backwards and was panting, both eyes dazzling silver disks glued to the pale girl on the floor when she suddenly began convulsing wildly, thrashing against the hard stone pavement. Tara was running instinctively towards the seizing girl_._ Willow's body collapsed again before she could reach her.

"Scar!" Tara had fallen to her knees and tentatively placed a hand on Willow's back as the girl attempted to push herself up from the floor with wobbly elbows. Her arms gave way and Tara only managed to prevent the girl falling face first into stone by squeezing her arm around the redheads waist.

"Easy, easy..." Tara whispered holding tighter as Willow slumped forward. Buffy and Dawn formed a semi-circle around the wounded girl.

"I can't bre-e-e-ath" a shaking strangled voice, and Tara couldn't either. Willow felt so fragile under her fingertips. _  
_

"Easy." She soothed again.

Willows body then surged forward vomiting pools of black ink, gasping for air, and struggling breathlessly to avoid asphyxiation.

"Tara." A desperate heartfelt cry, Tara could feel the girls rib-cage straining against her skin with each gasp, her lungs failing miserably to sustain her. She scooped red hair way from Willows face.

"shhhh." Tucking hair safely behind ears. _What has he do to you? _

"No, you have to go." Willow wheezed as she scrambled away on uncooperative limbs. Tara followed her friend and managed to half catch her as she fell over her own feet, landing roughly on pavement. She knelt beside the quivering girl.

"I'm not leaving you." Tara said shaking her head. She gently cupped Willow cheek so that the girl would look at her.

"Tara" For the first time blue eyes found their mark, but it wasn't green, it wasn't warmth, it wasn't sweet. It was two blacken spheres, eclipsing all light that lay beneath. The monstrous dark pools bled tears down blotched cheeks. A large split in skin spread over Willows forehead. _This can't be happening.  
_

"Go!" Willow shouted, but all Tara could do was stare into black eyes.

"Scarlet?" Dawn ventured quietly.

"What's wrong with her?" Buffy's voice, Tara didn't reply.

"Leave me here! Take the others and go!" Willow implored.

Tara shook her head adamantly and touched the nasty gash on Willow's forehead with tentative fingers, she felt Willow lean into her.

"Please" the redhead begged and Tara gently lent their foreheads together so that when she shook her head again it moved Willow's side to side. And Tara knew that she would never leave her. Not for anything in the world.

"Can't say she didn't ask you nicely." Rack interrupted. He was standing right behind them. Buffy threw a fist as if to strike him but Rack simply flicked his wrist and she flew into the cave wall with a glow of red energy. Dawn ran at him and he deflected her with ease, landing her next to her sister.

Tara rose from her knees; she didn't have much up her sleeve in the way of a magical duel; just some protection force fields and a spell to ignite fire. But there was no way she was going to let him touch Willow. It wasn't a matter of courage, it was a matter of love.

"Move." He purred.

She shook her head.

"Please, just do as he says." came Willows strained voice from behind, she had manage to balance herself on two uncoordinated legs her whole body swaying dangerously as her knees threatened to buckle.

"Willow." Tara rushed towards the shivering redhead in order to stabilize her but with a purposeful movement of his hand Rack slammed Tara roughly against a stone wall.

"No!" A weak cry from Willow's lips.

Tara felt her breath escape her lungs as Giles and Xander guided her back to her feet. A sharp stabbing pain at the base of her neck and her vision blurred. Buffy charged at the sorcerer but he swept her off her feet with a simple gesture. Rack leered at the slayer with a domineering hand poised to attack.

"Et plaga dolosa." He hissed and Buffy shrieked in agony as the warlock's spell shook her body.

"Stop it! Stop it! I'll do whatever you want, please just let them go." Willow was crying.

It was then that everything fell quiet and the only sound was the soft echoing of dripping water, and the faintest rumble of cars up above.

Rack calmly made his way to Willow and wrapped a strong hand possessively around her throat. She flinched as he sniffed at her hair.

"You heard the girl." He said.

They didn't move.

"Please just go." Willow whispered.

The momentous nature of that single syllable amazed Tara. _Go._ Willow was telling them to abandon her, to run away and never look back.

"We don't just leave our friends behind like that." Dawn answered. And Tara was immensely glad the teenager was there.

The Scooby's were united, no one was going anywhere.

Rack was rubbing his hands up and down Willows arms creating sparks of orange glow to flicker around his fingertips.

"Well, we could have done this the easy way..." He hissed in a sultry tone as he lifted a glowing hand and stretched it towards them with a sadistic smile. That hand held the promise of destruction, the promise of pain, the promise of death. All they could do was brace themselves.

But then it happened._  
_

"I said go!" Willow yelled and magic spilled from her body as a bright white spark and wrapped around everything in its path. The light in its glorious purity blinded all in its wake. It was the most powerful force Tara had ever felt, but rather than being swallowed up and drowned in it, she felt it embrace her and carry her away.

Tara forced herself to focus her senses, the air no-longer reeked of dark magicks or damp rocks, but smelt like herbal teas and incense. As her vision faded from white into colours she realised she was no longer in a the sewers, but draped unceremoniously on the floor of the magic box. Sitting up abruptly she shot her eyes frantically about the room; _Dawn _by the counter, _Buffy_ by the door, _Xander_ slouched beside _Anya_ lying near _Giles, no, no, no, no. Where is she?! Where is she?! _But it was no use, Willow was gone.

TBC


	9. Chapter 9: Tragic Love Stories

**A/N: Same as always. ****If you've got any thoughts, please tell me all about them :) **

**Disclaimer: BTVS = not mine, This Story = mine. **

* * *

**Chapter 9: Tragic Love Stories **

_Cleansed._ That's how Buffy felt. Everything was clear, calm and simple. Her eyes shuttered open. A wooden door...she was looking through the crack under a varnish stained wooden door. Sunlight shone through the gap and onto her legs which were draped lazily off to one side. Buffy smiled contentedly. She was always waking up in the strangest positions.

"Crap!" Buffy' sprung up as if she'd suddenly realized she'd slept through her alarm._ Sewers, creepy dude, et plaga dolosa, pain, daggers twisting in her gut, Dawn!_

She scanned the perimeter where she immediately found long hair, blue sneakers and rainbow striped tank top, Dawn. She was safe. Lying unharmed by the counter of the Magic Box. _We're not underground anymore. _It was an obvious realization, but in her defense she'd only just woken up.

"Xander?!" She called. _He was in trouble in the cave._

"Right here." Came her friend's drowsy voice. She turned to see him, semi-lucid, slouched beside a chair: no cuts, no bruises, no blood. He looked fine. Anya was fussing over him, rearranging his shirt as if checking for wounds underneath.

"You were all beat up. I remember, just now, you were all beat up. I kept thinking o_h no his gonna die and it'll be all my fault for letting him be stupid as always and..._" Anya's voice was shrill.

"Arn, honey, I'm fine." He grabbed her hand to stop her from investigating further into his hair. She held onto it for a moment before pulling away.

"How are we here?" Xander asked as if the incongruity of the situation only just dawned on him. Everyone seemed awake now, and were gathering from their places they had found themselves scattered about the shop.

"Some sort of teleportation spell I presume. It seems our Scarlet has some definite magical abilities now that she's attained corporeal form."

"Willow." Dawn corrected quietly. Buffy looked at her little sister.

"He said her name's Willow." Dawn explained in a little voice.

There was a stillness in the conversation as the statement sunk into the air and drifted about the room.

"She's not here, neither is Amy." Tara spoke for the first time. It's seemed fitting that she was the one to break the silence. Buffy surveyed the space for a second time, Tara was right; it was just the six of them.

"We should go back, check the sewers, maybe Rack's still keeping them there." Buffy suggested.

"Oh that's a good, plan, then he can melt you entrails with his mind and eat you up like soup." Anya interjected sarcastically.

"I hate to agree with Anya on this one Buff, but we we're dying out there before ghost-girl went all Wiccan power on us." Xander said.

"We can't just leave her there, she saved us." Dawn fought.

Buffy cringed, she missed that clarity she'd felt when she woke up, she missed feeling cleansed. Magic had never felt like that to her before, it was always uncomfortable and jarring but this, it felt pure.

"How did she do that anyway? Willow? I thought you said Rack was disturbing the magical flow or something." Buffy asked.

"He was." Tara whispered with a distant expression, it was as if a quite revelation was unfolding in the privacy of her thoughts. Buffy watched her closely, trying to read the expression without success.

"It's fascinating, she didn't seem to draw energy from her surroundings, or channel them through a spell, she just..." Giles was in full Watcher mode.

"The magic didn't come from a second origin at all, it was hers." Tara interrupted adamantly. Buffy didn't know what that statement meant, but she knew it must be important because of the sudden flare of realization that passed across the Watcher's face.

"You think she was channeling it directly?" Giles was awestruck.

"I do." Tara affirmed with a nod. Giles slid his glasses from his nose and began whipping them with a handkerchief.

"That would give a lot of people a very good reason to separate her physical form from her spiritual presence." Giles agreed.

"Who'd want to separate her, good guys or bad guys?" Xander asked.

"Both." Anya answered, it seemed she too realized whatever important detail that was still alluding Buffy entirely.

"I don't understand. She's some kind of magic wiz?" Buffy was trying to clarify.

"Wiz, wizard. Oh that's a thing. A magic wizard I mean..."Dawn babbled nervously.

"I wish it was that simple...We can go over the details once we've got her home safe with us, okay? But right now we need to get her away from the dark magicks. She's in alot of danger, they could make her do things, hurt people, they could end the world if they wanted to." Tara spoke with a serious authority she seemed to always find inside herself whenever it was needed.

"I think I liked it better when she was a ghost." Dawn said innocently.

Silence followed.

"Guess that's my cue. I'm on it, we'll get her back and figure this whole mega-witch scenario out then." Buffy started towards the door.

"You shouldn't go alone Buffy." Giles called after her.

"I'll pick Spike up on the way, he knows those sewers like the back of is melanin deprived hands."

"I'm coming with you." Tara stated as she headed after her friend.

"I don't think so." Buffy said. It was then that she saw a little blood stained on Tara's forehead. It couldn't have been her own, they were all healed the instant the spell touched them. _Willow_. Buffy had watched the two of them cling to one another before they'd been forced apart. Their heads had been pressed together closely as they'd pleaded with each other to be safe.

_She's in love with her._

Buffy grabbed Tara's shoulders, partly to stop her walking out the door and partly to shake some sense into her.

"Tara, listen to me. You know I want you to come, I do. But I need you here. You can try a locating spell, see if you can track her down that way." Buffy suggested.

"He's probably already raised a deflective barrier, and even if he hadn't I'd need something of hers, like clothes or jewelry or a strand of hair, and she doesn't have anything! Theres not one part of her left behind, she's just gone. She's been a ghost ever since she can remember and now she's human and she's out there, WITH SOME MANIAC WHO'S PROBABLY TRYING TO USE HER AS A BEACON FOR ALL THINGS EVIL!" Buffy was stunned. Tara hadn't yelled in all the time they'd know each other, and they'd been through so much. Both of their mother's deaths, numerous apocalypses, countless run in with dealth...

But this was different. Whatever was between Tara and Willow had been there from the beginning. Buffy couldn't believe she hadn't seen it all along. Little glances, little sighs, both ever the broken hearted girls, longing for something lost. Tara would never yell like that about Amy, Amy had never been anything but a convenient distraction from it all. A distraction from the simple truth that the person she wanted most in the world would never be hers. And Buffy knew all too well how that felt.

Just another tragic love story for the Scooby gang.

* * *

"Tara! Buffy! Wait!" Anya called as she chased the girls down the street. She had to do this, do this for Willow.

They turned impatiently. Anya decided it might be easier to skip the explanation.

"I can get you there faster." She gasped, all that jogging had warn her out. She held out two hands towards the girls.

"Hold on to me...' But Buffy and Tara just regarded her with curiosity.

"NOW ladies were in a bit of a time sensitive situation here!" Anya demanded. They both complied and she squeezed their hands a little harder for reassurance.

Anya knew she was breaking all the rules, this was a public place in broad day-light and there were civilians everywhere. Not to mention that this little venture had absolutely nothing to do with vengeance. _Oh yea, D'hoffryn gonna love this!_ But she had to do it, Xander almost died, and if this poor girl was what she thought she might be well...the sooner they find her the better._  
_

* * *

Tara dropped Anya's hand.

They were here. Willow wasn't. She always knew if Willow was close.

"She's not here." She said defeated. Buffy had begun pacing about the alcove to look for clues.

"Well, bright side, at least the mean-man can't make us into soup."Anya smiled, as always inappropriately optimistic.

"Is there any magical trace thingys you can pick up on Tara? Something that might indicate where they might have been going?" Buffy asked, but Tara didn't hear her. She had found a puddle of black ink on the stone floor. She remembered Willow surging forward, remembered the darkness spill out of her. Remembered the foul scent of the dark arts drenching all in it's path. Remembered the noise "Tara" a desperate plea. Remembered that frail little body seize violently, convulsing over and over.

Tara felt herself sway ever so slightly before she fell hard onto her knees and vomited onto the pavement.

"Oh..."Anya managed, she awkwardly shuffled over and attempted catch blond hair before it fell into the growing pool of sick.

"There. There." She muttered as she stiffly patted Tara on the back.

Buffy had been further away but now came to crouch infront of Tara.

"You okay?" Buffy asked simply.

"I'm fine." Tara replied closing her eyes for a moment whilst the dizziness passed.

"Well aren't you the little trooper." Anya said lightly with an encouraging squeeze of Tara's arrm.

"Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh..." There was a long groan from the darkest crevice of the cave.

All three of them shot their eyes towards the noise. Someone was there.

Buffy was on her feet approaching the mass hidden in shadows.

"Amy?" Buffy asked into the darkness. And Tara felt her insides tense and twist within her.

"He left me here. He just took my pendant, took his oh-so-precious Willow and left me here! That son of a bitch!" Amy scowled from the dank corner.

"Amy what the hell are you in to?" Buffy growled as she shoved the girl out of hiding and into the light.

Amy looked bad. She was twitching like some sort of deranged animal and scratching her nails along her torso and her back. Her eyes refused to focus on a single point, and her pupils kept dilating and constricting erratically.

"She was mine! We were suppose to do it my way! We were suppose to do it together! It's my wish! My world! My world! My world" She hissed as her right hand started to spasm. _  
_

Buffy grabbed Amy roughly by the collar.

"You're coming with us." Buffy ordered.

* * *

Xander sat nervously on the Summer's porch. His thighs were bouncing up and down and he couldn't stop fidgeting with his hands. He slid a gold band on an off his ring finger, then flicked it like a coin before returning it safely to it's place. He knew he should stop wearing it, but couldn't seem to let it go. It was suppose to symbolize something. It was suppose to mean forever.

"Do you think they've found her?" Dawn asked from beside him.

"No Dawn, if they'd found her they would've been all with the woohooo and less with the meeting at your place STAT." He answered. Buffy had only talked to him briefly on the phone, but from what he had heard, this didn't sound good.

"Why are the taking so long?! Shouldn't Anya just be able to vengeance jump them over here like POOF." Dawn asked with a worried voice. _She really does have to deal with to much for a kid. _Xander thought.

Then there was the Anya thing. He was thinking about that a lot too.

Twenty minutes ago as Buffy and Tara ran off in pursuit of sewers Anya had stood up abruptly and said "I should go with them."

The comment had surprised Xander, as Anya was usually all about self preservation and less about selfless heroics. However Anya did have a knack for surprising him.

"While that is a lovely gesture Anya I don't think that would be wise." Giles stated.

"You'll get hurt." Xander surmised simply.

"No, I wont actually...because I can't. Not really. I'm a vengeance demon...again." She announced rather bluntly.

She then walked to the till, double checked the cash compartment was locked and started towards the door.

"When did this happen?" Xander asked with a shell-shocked expression.

"When do you think?" Anya whispered a little bitterly, and that was the last Xander sore of her.

"Maybe they hit teleportory-traffic on the trans-dimensional highway." Dawn joked. It made Xander smile. _  
_

"Maybe." He replied a little hopefully.

They sat on the porch for a moment, neither really knowing what to say. Some kids were being dropped off on a school bus next door, and Xander couldn't believe it was already that time of day.

"She's still got a soul." Dawn said. And Xander looked at her sideways.

"Anya. She's still got a soul even though she's back with D'hoffryn and the whole vengeance gig. Otherwise she wouldn't want to help, she wouldn't feel so scared when you get hurt, she wouldn't be hanging around here at all. She'd just go from wish to wish like she use too before she changed the first time." Dawn said simply.

"Yea." Xander nodded.

"And I mean Buffy's always dating soul-having demons. It's like Scooby protocol. You can date them, if they don't kill your friends." Dawn continued.

"I must have skimmed that in the manual." Xander smiled.

"Oh it's there. In big bold letters...page twenty four, right under the historical guide to tragic love and romantic failures" Dawn still managed a straight face.

"Oh that'd be it, I never read past page three unless there's pictures." Xander deadpanned.

There was another prolonged lull in conversation, as neither of them attempted to fill it.

All that was left to do was wait.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10: Where's Willow?

**A/N: Here's a little chapter to get us closer to some good stuff. Feedback always welcome! Disclaimer: I own nothing. **

* * *

**Chapter 10: Where's Willow? **

Dawn was watching Tara. She had just been sitting on the floor leaning her back against an empty bookshelf that Mr. Summers had stored in the basement years ago. It was strange, Dawn hardly even remembered her father's face, but she remembered that her mother had wanted to donate the bookcase, and her father had wanted to keep it.

The others were interrogating Amy, it didn't seem right, seeing her tied up to a chair, rocking back and forth as if she didn't realize she was moving at all. Sweating like she had a fever. Clenching her teeth so loudly that Dawn could hear the grinding. Buffy had bound her tightly to help stop the spasms, but Amy still rubbed her wrists against the rope to feel the friction.

"Wrong she made me come back wrong. I was better in the cage. Better not knowing. Better without the constant pinching, prodding, tingle underneath. It's all gone wrong, erosion in the flesh..."Amy was muttering. Dawn found it hard to look at, hard to listen too. Maybe Buffy was right, maybe she was too young for this stuff.

She walked over to where Tara sat on the ground, and crouched beside her in a similar position. The bookcase wasn't the most comfortable back rest, one shelf dug in to Dawn's shoulder blades and the next into her tail bone.

"Hey." Dawn greeted softly. Tara didn't respond. When they'd got home Anya had insisted Tara keep off her feet, drink plenty of fluids, and try not to puke on the carpeted areas. Dawn had put two and two together.

"How you doing?" Dawn asked, attempting to pull Tara out of whatever thoughts had caused that haunted expression. No reply, but Tara did take a steady breath in through her nose and out through pursed lips.

Dawn shuffled closer and leaned her head against Tara's shoulder.

"I'm really sorry." Dawn whispered as she took Tara's hand and squeezed. And she was.

* * *

"What's wrong with her?" Anya asked, as Amy began twitching her neck in little jolts. Giles knew of course, he'd seen this before.

"Withdrawal. She's withdrawing from the dark magic. I've never seen a case this severe." He admitted to the others who circled around the wooden chair.

"That doesn't make sense, she's not an addict Mr Giles. She's never shown any symptoms of dependency. I would have noticed." Tara said in an almost inaudible voice; however the fact that she opened her mouth was enough to get everyone's immediate attention.

"Could she have cloaked it? Like the whole Willow's a ghost, see no more, thing?" Buffy suggested.

"We've been over this, once you know about the cloak, the cloak is lifted. It's like alternate reality 101." Anya interjected.

"Leave it to demon girl to have all the fun-facts on life after a wish." Xander muttered bitterly under his breath and Anya fell silent.

The tension in the air was palpable. Giles felt his own weariness catching up on him through the ache behind his eyes. But this was no time for rest. If their theory was correct then Willow was not only a tremendously dangerous witch in her own right, but also a very dangerous weapon.

"You say she admitted it was her?" Giles inquired as if heading towards an idea.

"She did. Everything but a signed confession. She's our reality bender." Buffy affirmed

"Well that's probably what's been sustaining her. In a world created by Dark magicks, the one controlling it would have a continuous feed to the power in-which it came to be." He stated.

"Which would mean Amy's been getting a constant flow of dark juices since before Buffy's dream?" Xander asked .

"Preciously." Giles agreed. As he looked over at the girl, there was pity in his eyes.

"What stopped it? Why is she cut off now from her wish-world supply of evil?" Buffy asked, always trying to get to the point.

"I suspect that ever since this world begun to lose its credibility it has had an effect on her. But Rack changed something this morning. By making Willow human he must have altered a fundamental aspect of Amy's wish, it's breaking apart; it's no longer her world." Giles summarized his hypothesis. It seemed plausible enough.

"Why did you do it? Why curse Willow? Who is she too you?!" Buffy yelled at the girl whilst shaking her shoulders.

"Willow, Willow, Willow. Everyone wants to find Willow. No one cares about her secrets, no one holds them against her, no one scratches at her skin..."

Amy's rant was interrupted when Buffy slapped her across the cheek.

"Tell me where she is." Buffy ordered.

Amy grinned through a split lip letting her head fall to the side as if her neck refused to support it.

"She's mine. Bastard promised. I get all the glory when they drink till she's dry." Amy hissed. Buffy shoved the chair so that it fell onto its side.

Amy let out cackle. It was the sort of laugh that would have seemed natural when enjoying a comedy on TV, but in the current circumstances was just plain eerie.

"You got nothing on me Buffy. And in case you don't remember you're not big with killing humans. To high and mighty to watch the sinners blood boil." She taunted, as a shrill chuckle forced through her throat.

Giles found himself wondering again what makes a person so much better than a beast.

It was then that Tara, who had remained quite all afternoon, stood slowly, walked to where her girlfriend (well most likely ex-girlfriend by now) was lying strapped to a chair and promptly kicked her in the face with one solid motion.

"I am having the worst day, and I really couldn't care less that I've been dating a manipulative psychopath for over a year. I don't care who the hell you are. I don't care why the hell you did it. I just care where she is. So tell Amy Madison, where's Willow?" Tara spoke through clenched teeth, tears escaped blue eyes but they didn't have any effect on her voice. She didn't' stutter once.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: I'm SO incredibly excited and SO incredibly nervous about this, I can't decide which, either way I present to you Chapter 11: The Tale of the Strawberry Flower. Hopefully it'll answer some questions. Whether your just lurking about on the internet or letting me know what you think I just wanted to say a big thank-you for casually-skimming/reading/following/reviewing my little story so far. Just like my Grandad use to say "it only gets better from here".**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the words I type. **

* * *

Previously on Cobwebs and Silk...

_"You got nothing on me Buffy. And in case you don't remember you're not big with killing humans. To high and mighty to watch the sinners blood boil." Amy taunted, as a shrill chuckle forced through her throat._

_Giles found himself wondering again what makes a person so much better than a beast._

_It was then that Tara, who had remained quite all afternoon, stood slowly, walked to where her girlfriend (well most likely ex-girlfriend by now) was lying strapped to a chair and promptly kicked her in the face with one solid motion._

_"I am having the worst day, and I really couldn't care less that I've been dating a manipulative psychopath for over a year. I don't care who the hell you are. I don't care why the hell you did it. I just care where she is. So tell Amy Madison, where's Willow?" Tara spoke through clenched teeth, tears escaped blue eyes but they didn't have any effect on her voice. She didn't' stutter once._

**Chapter 11: The Tale of the Strawberry Flower**

The air stilled. Tara could feel everyone looking at her, she hated when people looked at her like that. It was the way her father had looked the night she told him her "dirty little secret" as Donny use to call it. That was over a year ago now, and that was the last time she' d seen him.

Blood began to seep from Amy's nose, Tara had never made someone bleed before. Not once.

_I did that. _Tara shuddered at the thought, and for the briefest moment she felt absolutely terrified but the emotion dissolved into her determination and was lost almost instantly.

They had to find Willow.

It was a matter of necessity. Willow was special; Tara had always known that, but she was rapidly coming to understand the true extent of that simple truth. "_You think she was channeling it directly?"_ Giles voice echoed in her thoughts.

In the sewers Willow had cast, she hadn't meant to, but she had, what was troubling Tara was that she didn't draw her power from a source. Tara had studied witchcraft her entire life,_ there always has to be a source._

See a witch has the ability to access power and manipulate it, to create the physical embodiment of spirit. This power can be in almost anything, there is power in nature, there is power in cursed objects, there is power in enchanted words, there is power in spells, you can make power if you combine herbs and potions, you can even be granted power in times of need from a higher being. _That's why people pray, their begging for power they don't have._

Power has to come from something. But Willow's power...it had come from herself. Tara knew what that meant, she wished she didn't. _I need to stop it, we have to get her away from Rack, she shouldn't be near magic at all, we have to get her away from the hell mouth. Far far away_

"I don't know." Amy said adamantly. Stressing each syllable. For the first time that afternoon the hostage reminded the others of the Amy they grew up with. The Amy who'd insisted on researching from home when things got boring and always ate the last of the jelly donuts. She'd stopped shaking, she just lay on her side tied to a chair.

"Amy." Tara warned. There was a threat embedded in the inflection. They needed more than that.

"I don't know where they are I swear. I blacked out after Willow...after she...wait how did she?..." Amy suddenly twisted her head to the side so that she could look at Tara directly. Her brow knitted in confusion for a moment before her jaw dropped at the realization.

"Oh my god... " came Amy's voice through an astounded expression.

Tara swallowed._ Why would that shock her? _

"Willow's a source...A living source!" Amy announced as if angry she hadn't realized the fact earlier. _She's surprised?_

"You didn't know?" Tara clarified cautiously._  
_

"She must have, why else separate the witch's essence from her physical form if not for that reason?" Giles interjected quite logically.

Buffy strode past Tara and yanked the chair back up on all four legs so that the conversation could be continued with everyone upright.

"That bastard! He's gonna use her as a beacon! He'll have a direct channel! Never-ending supply! She was mine! It's my world! My magicks! I should get the source! He stole it from me! It had be Willow, sweet little Willow, that should be MY power! I showed it to her! Gave her a taste. She was suppose to pay me back!" her voice became hurried a slurred with rage as she spat each word out and began twitching against the chair, whatever lucidity Amy had found after Tara's assault was quickly waning.

* * *

"Amy!" Buffy shouted.

"He used me..." Amy snarled loudly. She suddenly remembered Rack's sultry voice the night before "_Your mother tasted like cheap perfume and vodka."_ He had know where it was "_i__n the bedside draw she kept under lock and key, under the pearls and the broach in the shape of a peacock."_ Her mother wouldn't have left it there. Her mother would have used it. Wished her way right back into her glory days. Which meant it was someone else...which meant it was Rack.

"Amy!" Buffy yelled, but Amy didn't hear her.

"He's been planning this all along! He said I could drink when she was dry! Liar! He wants it all for himself the greedy pig!" Amy was screaming now as if accusing Rack to his face. But the warlock wasn't there, just the Scoobies and the growing volume of Amy's voice.

"Buffy the neighbors." Xander pointed out.

"Argghhhhhhh!" An uncontrollably shrill scream tore through Amy throat. The other's shot hands over ears in an attempt to preserve there violated eardrums. Amy threw her weight vigorously about the wooden chair and it's frame threatened to buckle as it warped with the thrashing movements of its occupant.

"He just left me there! All covered in filth! Left me alone to itch! Itch! Itch! Itch under the skin, claws deeper deeper deeper into the bones beneath my chest!" Amy was screaming. It was difficult to discern exactly when one word started and the next begun

"Someone's defiantly going to here that!" Anya yelled over the chaos.

"AMY!" Buffy grasped the girl roughly by the shoulders in an effort to silence her. Amy's head bent crookedly left to right as to avoid Buffy's eyes as she continued murmuring in a softer tone.

"She's insane." Dawn stated in a horrified little voice from the corner of the room.

"Amy I need you to stick with me here for a second, then you can go play in crazy town all you like." Buffy said clicking her fingers in Amy's face. Amy could hear it _SNAP SNAP SNAP,_ but couldn't manage to focus her eyes long enough to identify the cause of the sound. She could feel her blood grating against her veins like salt. Every noise was amplified. Every movement an attack._ SNAP SNAP SNAP. _

"Have to help them. Have to help them catch kill the bastard." Amy muttered, she flinched as her left arm started to spasm despite her restraints.

"That's the spirit!." Anya said in a awkward but cheery voice.

Amy commenced rocking gently, it was a comforting motion. _Like being a baby. Rock them to sleep. _She couldn't remember if her mother ever did that.

"Why did you make Willow a ghost?" Tara asked softly from over Buffy's shoulder.

"Didn't mean ghost. I meant alone. I meant desperate." Amy replied shakily.

"Why?" Tara asked quickly.

The basement seemed so quite now.

"Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided...I had to help her choose." Amy answered in a riddle. _Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided_, the words seemed to loop through her thoughts over and over and she let them escape in a chant.

"Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided."

"Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided."

"Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided."

"Okay I think we get it." Xander said a shifting a little uncomfortably om his feet.

"I've heard that before, is that an ancient poem?...a prophesy?...a passage from a famous text?" Giles questioned.

"Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided." Amy answered rather unhelpfully.

"Amy?" Buffy tried to pull the girl from her repletion.

"Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided." Amy whispered softly to herself.

"Amy!" Buffy shook her a little without result.

"I think we broke her." Dawn suggested form where she sat, backed up against the bookshelf.

But Amy wasn't listening to anyone in the Summer's basement anymore. All she could hear was those words as the resonated through her body.

* * *

They'd lost Amy. Well not literally, she was still in the basement. Just, you know, insane. The Scooby's were assembled at the Magic Box, full research mode, and Buffy began to regret leaving a crazy-witch-bitch tied to her generator while they were out of the house. _I really can't afford to cover any damages if she spazs out and magicks my basement into a hell dimension or something...maybe I could claim insurance? Unexpected mystical occurrence cover...that's not a real thing...okay maybe I could claim that the molten lava was a result of some freak fire caused by faulty circuits...that could work...wait do I even have insurance? I should really know that sort of thing. _She cringed. _Note to self: Ask Giles if I have insurance. _

Buffy's attention span had flown out the window about twenty minutes ago. _Who knew searching through hundreds of ratty old books to try and find a single sentence that Giles thinks he might have read in the last decade is not the where the parties at? _She smiled a little and tried look studious.

Anya kept saying, "Oh! Oh!" as if she'd found something before announcing something like "This was me! I was the one who flayed that villager in 1899! Funny story actually..." and then retelling some gruesome tale, with much to graphic descriptors. Dawn seemed intent on whatever text lay before her; she ran her finger quickly through every line before turning to the next page. It was a very analytic approach, Buffy was impressed, _she's like a baby watcher. _ Xander was quite, and to his credit there was a book open on his lap, but he looked like he was struggling to remain awake and occasionally shot Buffy a _kill me now_ look, which would make Buffy giggle. Giles was rummaging through another box of dusty covers saying he'd recognize the text if he sore it...he thought it was green...or maybe blue...defiantly a cool color. Buffy had to hand it to him, if she'd read as much as he had there would be no way she'd remember something like this. _Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided._ That was their only lead. Well, they'd worked with less.

It was getting late and Buffy thought she'd wait another five minutes before taking Dawn home and doing a quick patrol. Maybe she should ask Tara to come with her? She didn't want her friend to be alone right now. Tara was sitting tightly-strung at the table. Her impeccable posture revealed the tension between her shoulder blades. She was frantically scanning book, after scroll, after random clay tablet. Anything she could get her hands on with writing. The crease between her eyes was threatening to become permanently engraved, and Buffy thought she must have a head-ache by now. Occasionally she would quickly wipe the palm of her hand down the length of her face, squint her eyes closed as if banishing unwanted thoughts and then recommence vigilant searching. _She needs to get out of here for a bit, clear her head, SLEEP! Oh wow I wish I was sleeping right now. _

It was then that Dawn called Giles over to check something and he happily announced that they'd found it._ Great darkness, great light, in a moment to be decided. _

Those words were recorded in a dusty old manuscript in a passage entitled _Cobwebs and Silk_. It was the tale of a strawberry flower that had both the potential to poison and the potential to heal. A thick ink line had been drawn to divide the tattered pages of the text, each side telling a version of the parable.

On one side the strawberry flower desiccated the soil of the earth so that no living thing would ever come to grow there again, the flower withered and cobwebs infested its roots.

On the other the flower bloomed. It's stamen was pure, it's seed ever-growing, and it's petal's white silk. The Powers That Be blessed it's fruit so that all who ate of it were protected from harm, comforted through pain and found peace within.

At the end of each segment it repeated great darkness, great light, in a moment decided.

"Fragaria ananassa, a strawberry flower." Giles translated as her read the final lines.

The shop was warm, protected against the nights chill, but even so Buffy felt a shiver run through her body as they all sat in silence, not knowing what to do with their new found information.

"So Scarlet's a hypothetical flower that's either gonna kill us all or make us into fruit salad?" Xander joked, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work. If anything the admission made things worse.

"Willow. Her name's Willow." Dawn whispered after no one else made an attempt to correct him. Buffy noticed her little sister move to sit with Tara about halfway through the first segment of story. She couldn't help swell with pride at Dawn's kind eyes when she squeezed Tara's hand under the table. _Thats my girl. _She'd thought

"It's curious, it ends in a question...perhaps to challenge the reader on their personal values? Help them critically reflect on what the parable means to them?" Giles suggested.

"What's does it ask?" Anya inquired simply, she seemed to have picked up on the tension, _maybe there's hope for her yet._ Buffy smiled as Giles cleared his throat.

"If found but what an innocent plant, whose fate is not determined. For you, dear friend, what must occur for justice to remain on course? The age-long quest, un-ending doubt, what shall she be, what is to come. So ask yourself, what can you see, is it cobwebs or is it silk?" He dictated.

There was another pause and Buffy shifted uncomfortably on her stool. Then after a few seconds came Tara's gentle voice.

"I like that." She whispered.

* * *

"How you doing Tare?" Buffy asked. She had managed to convince her to come patrolling with her and left Xander to watch Dawn. Well that and check that Amy hadn't burnt the house down. He'd called, apparently the house was still in one piece, but Buffy was sceptical.

"Hmm?" Tara replied vaguely, as she had to every question in the last twelve minutes.

"Feelings? You? Got any bobbling around in that head of yours?" It had been easy to get Tara to come, especially after they'd followed up their only clue. _Step 1:Identify weird prophesy thing, Check. Step 2: find Willow_. And well Buffy figured that wondering around the streets of Sunnydale was as good a way as any.

"Defiantly got feelings." Tara replied stoically.

"Okaaayyy...anything you'd like to share?" Buffy pushed as she dogged around some mysterios slug in the gutter.

"Eek." She muttered at the strange smelling substance.

"Cold. I feel cold." Tara answered.

"Middle of winter will do that to you." Buffy offered.

There was a silence. Buffy looked out at the deserted street and tried to focus on any possible vampiric activity.

"I'm not upset about Amy." Tara said quietly.

"Why would you be? She lied to you, manipulated you and dated you all in one swing. That and she's been out to get the women you in love with." Buffy said lightly. She'd expected Tara might react to the statement, at least flinch, but she didn't she just kept walking as if she hadn't heard it.

"Tare..."

"No Buff really. I mean I think about when we first met, and I remember thinking. Those eyes. I could loose myself forever in those eyes...but then I see her and her eyes are like this pale blue. It's the same colour as my Dad's and Donny's and it makes feel...cold. I don't think I'd ever look at the shade of blue and feel anything but cold. Last week the day you had the dream, do you remember?" Tara asked.

Buffy nodded.

"I was watching her, and suddenly everything she did made me think: I don't like it when she does that."

Buffy let the words hang in the night air for a moment as she hugged her coat tighter, she was glad she'd picked the sheepskin one. It was freezing.

"You think you we're never with her? In the real world?" Buffy asked.

A distant street light started to flicked up ahead of them but neither of the girls took any notice.

"I dunno, I've got some pretty serious self-esteem issues." Tara smiled and it made Buffy laugh.

The light continued to flicker erratically, and it made the girls shadows strobe in and out of existence. Still neither noticed. Buffy stepped around another pile of slug and grimaced.

"Seriously what is that stuff? I've got enough problems without having to worry about slug soiled boots." Buffy muttered and Tara let a small smile touch her lips.

They walked on, closer and closer towards a flickering traffic light.

"Tare, you want to actually talk about the person on your mind?"

"Buffy. Please." Tara whispered. It sounded like a helpless plea.

"Okay, I'll leave that topic alone." Buffy had known Tara long enough to know she'd only close up if pushed on the matter. _And I want open Tara. I want not running away from home and sleeping in a park with a ghost Tara._

"How about Christmas presents? Is that off limits? Because I need some serious Dawn-related guidance, I mean it's the middle of December and I have no idea what I'm supposed to get her!" Buffy looked sideways and realized Tara had stopped dead in her tracks a few steps ago.

"Tara?" Buffy whispered.

Tara held up a finger as if to tell Buffy to wait a moment.

"What can you hear something?" Buffy asked, it seemed unlikely that she wouldn't able to hear it too, slayer senses and all. But Tara was definitely onto something. She was closing her eyes as if concentrating, and the crease had returned between her eyes.

"Taste..." Tara stated simply. _Huh?_

"Because that last sugar doughnut is just really worth savoring all night long?" Buffy asked lightly.

Tara didn't laugh. She just looked up abruptly and began urgently searching the dark street.

"What is it?" Buffy asked as she looked around trying to find some indication of what was going on.

"Strawberries..." Tara answered.

Buffy's eyes settled of the flickering street lamp and she suddenly remembered the light from above the sewers. _What's that?_ There was a shape, under the light post. _It's moving!_

Buffy sprinted full speed ahead towards the mysterious shape she'd seen from a distance. _It's moving._ Knocked over rubbish bins don't move, mail boxes don't move, left out old furniture doesn't move, weird piles of mystery sludge don't move but whatever this was, it moved.

_A person._ Buffy realized only when she was very close, because the person was covered in something... the slug? It made them look like part of a puddle the way it pooled around their form. _There so small._ Buffy thought as she reached the puddle.

"Hello? Can you hear me?!" Buffy asked as she waded into the substance. The figure let out a little groan, _female_, it was a girly groan. They were shivering violently curled up in the tightest ball of limbs and torso. _Need to get her out of here. _Buffy pulled the girl onto the pavement with strong arms.

The girls limbs unfolded slightly through the manoeuvre and her face tilted up to meet Buffy's as the slayer crouched down to meet her eye level. _Green._ The hugest green eyes shone through mud covered skin. Buffy decided with perfect clarity in that moment that whatever the hell was going on, this girl was the victim.

"It's okay, you're gonna be okay." She assured rubbing her hands up and down the girls ice cold forearms. She could hear Tara's running footsteps beat against the pavement coming closer. She was still far away, no match for the slayers speed.

"We'll just call an ambulance and..."

"Buffy?" Came the mysterious girl's voice. It was child-like and sweet, but also tainted with fear.

"You can speak! Good! Speaking is good!" The green-eyed girls breath gasped in and out of her throat and Buffy was scared she was dying. _Wait did she just call me Buffy?_

"Willow!" Tara cried out from a few meters away before she slammed down hard on her knees in front of the quivering girl, slightly nudging into Buffy in the process.

The girl flung herself into Tara's arms as quickly as Tara closed them around her.

"Tara." She whispered desperately into Tara's hair, who seemed to be holding on for dear life.

"I've got you." Tara whisper back.

"It's okay Willow I've got you." She kept saying.

Then Buffy heard a loud creaking noise and the bulb in the street light shattered. She attempted to shield her friends as the glass showered down on them. A large gush of wind howled through the abandoned street, picking up fragments of glass and pelting the sharp objects toward them.

"Not cool!" Buffy yelled.

She pulled Willow out of Tara's grasp in one swift motion, scooping her into carrying position and pulling Tara to her feet.

"We gotta go." Buffy explained as the glass shot towards them.

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: ****Like it, hate it, majorly confused by it, let me know because honestly I'm all three. **

******Thoughts in italics. The stories mine, the shows not.**

* * *

Chapter 12: Promise.

Xander was slouched lazily on the Summer's couch, and Dawn dangled her legs over the opposite arm-rest with her head propped up on a pillow in his lap. The TV was on. Some nineties sit-com blaring away into the lounge, candied laughter occasionally breaking the flow of the rhythmic banter. It was the sort of show that was only funny when you were in the right mood, and Dawn really wasn' she was in the mood for a good distraction, so in a way it served its purpose. She heard Xander snore from above her and flicked her eyes up at the man. Sure enough, he was asleep. Dawn couldn't help feel a little relieved. The evening had been full of uncomfortable silences, awkward laughs, forced optimism and fake smiles. Now that she was alone she didn't have to pretend to be brave. She could just sit and wait for Buffy and Tara to get home from patrolling.

_Strawberry flower. _Dawn thought sadly.

_I guess that explains the hair._ She smiled a little.

_Rack called her strawberries..._A shiver slithered down her neck. She knew if she let herself drift off that she'd have nightmares.

_"Her name's Willow, I need her help to make good on an old debt._ He had purred in the cave.

_I wonder who owe's him the favor?_ Dawn thought idly_. _

It could be anyone. A man like that had power over others. Could afford to hold things against them. Dawn shivered again, she didn't want to think about this anymore. She wanted it all to stop.

She glanced down at her watch, 11:07PM. Even if Buffy didn't find anything tonight on patrol she wouldn't be back for a few hours. _Good thing it's not a school night. _Dawn thought. She wanted to wait up and give Tara a hug before she went to bed. The blonde had looked like she needed it. If Dawn was honest with herself, she needed it too. She missed Scarlet, well Willow now, who she'd named Scarlet years ago. They'd been planning to meet tonight. Willow was going to help Dawn with her powerpont presentation for computer studies. For a ghost she'd always had a surprising aptitude for technologically. _She's was so smart...IS! I meant is! She IS so smart...and WILL BE still smart WHEN we get her back. Which we will. We have too..._

Dawn muted the TV when she heard muffled voices thought the door. _Buffy's talking pretty loud for this late. _She observed. Keys jingled, dropped with a "clink" on the welcome mat, then jingled again as they were fumbled about in the lock. _What's with the fine motor issues?_ Dawn thought as she stood and slowly approached the door.

Suddenly with burst and a clatter Buffy exploded through the front door holding a limp body covered in something.._.dark mud? _

Tara's was close behind. She looked dirty. She had black goopy stuff all over her blue sweater, _wait just a sweater?! _

"TARA where's your coat it's freezing out there?!" Dawn accused in a motherly tone.

Tara didn't respond, Dawn followed her gaze and saw Buffy lowering the figure, wrapped in Tara's jacket, onto the lounge. Xander was up on his feet trying to help, albeit a little dozily.

"Another one of those demons that don't go poof? I'm on it, I think I can bury it by in the construction site, we're building over the land next week and the foundations have already been secured, no one will accidentally dig up any monster bones while doing the gardening." Xander offered ruefully. Neither Tara or Buffy seemed to hear him.

Tara was holding the girls head up by cupping her face with both hands.

"Not a demon Xander..." Dawn whispered. _Injured girl...vampire victim?_

"I need you to look at me. Open your eyes." Tara was saying loudly while shaking the body slightly in an attempt to elicit a reaction. Dawn barely noticed Buffy retreating from the longue room.

"Sweetie you have to stay with me okay?" Tara kept yelling. Two heavy eye-lids flickered open and shut. Those green eyes were so familiar but Dawn hadn't a chance to place them.

"T-trying...ssssooo c-cold..." came a weak voice. _Willow's voice. _Dawn recognised as she stood motionless and out of the way. _They found her. _

"Don't try to talk okay? Just focus on staying awake for me. Willow you have to stay awake." Tara said sternly. _To sternly, Tara never talked like that. She never bossed people around. Never told you what to do. _It was only then that Dawn was forced to face the harsh reality of the situation, something really bad was happening.

"She's not shaking anymore...I think she stopped like three-blocks ago..." Buffy offered re-entering the room and promptly cloaking Willow in a heavy blanket she had obviously fetched from upstairs.

"Not shivering equals good right?" Xander questioned. Tara shook her head but didn't take her eyes off Willow.

"Shivering is your body trying to induce warmth, in the final stages of hyperthermia your body doesn't have the energy to keep going..." Tara's hurried explanation was cut short when Willow suddenly flopped to the left as she lost consciousness.

"Wooah" Xander exclaimed as Buffy and he managed stop the girl tumbling off the couch and propped her upright.

"Willow!? Willow? I need you to look at me." Tara urged gripping the girl tightly, the mud-clad girls eye's flicked open.

"I-I a-a-alwaysss l-look at y-you..." The injured girls' voice fading into a silent mumble as her eyes fell back into her head and her body sagged forward.

"We need to get her to a hospital!" Xander said urgently.

"What would we tell them?! It could be magicks, it could be anything." Buffy argued.

"Buffy she's gonna die!" Xander spat.

Dawn was hardly aware of their bickering as she moved towards her friend, limply held up by hands under her armpits._ She looks like a scarecrow _Dawn thought as she reached out a hand to touch the girls skin.

"She feels like ice." She whispered withdrawing her hand from the shock, Xander and Buffy fell silent.

"You have to do something. We have to help her. Do something." Dawn ordered and she heard the childish whimper in her own voice but couldn't care less about maturity right now.

"I'm so so sorry sweetie." Tara said quietly, initially Dawn had thought she was talking to her but when she looked to Tara she saw the blond lightly pressing her face against Willows and placing a kiss against her forehead. She seemed complete impervious to her surroundings. So utterly absorbed by the weak little body that had fallen forward into her arms.

It was a private moment forced to be shared.

Tara then lent away quickly grasping one of the redheads hands with her right and pressing the palm of her left against the girls mud covered chest. It took a second or two before an orange glow formed under Tara's finger-tips and Dawns sore her whisper "sorry" one last time as a bright spark of magic flashed through Tara's right hand to her left and into Willows chest.

* * *

Willows eye's flared open instantaneously.

Warmth. Through and Through. All encompassing, all consuming warmth. It shot through her heart and with each pump of the muscle washed heat through her entire being. Thorning the chill from her bones. She felt herself fall forward.

_Going down now..._

But before she'd hit the ground two hands where cradling her jaw, and two others steadied her by the shoulders.

"Wooah." She heard a familiar man's voice. Willow felt herself sway a little.

"We've got you Will." That was Buffy. _Where was..._

"Tara?" Willow whispered. The warmth was always Tara.

"You're okay." Came the quietest whisper, the most comforting noise, an angel's song. Warm breath of the words touching Willow's skin. She was so _close._

Willow's vision started to clear; it had been blurry and disjointed but was now fading into shapes and sillohuttes. She needed to see, needed to see her.

"Tara?" she repeated. The hand on her cheek slid down around the base of her neck and squeezed firmly. _Tara. _There was her anchor. There was her ocean blue steady calm grounding her in place. There was the peace in the madness; her certainty in the doubt, there was her everything.

She felt a gentle nudge of Tara's forehead bump her own as the hands pulled her closer. Tara didn't speak, she just breathed against Willows lips and the slug-covered girl smiled widely as she sore two blue eyes pouring into her own.

"There you are." Willow whispered sweetly, bringing weak hands up to Tara's face.

"Hey you." Tara replied softly with a little smile as dirty fingers started tracing the shape of her jaw, the length of her cheek, across her temple and under her brow.

"Hey." Willow whispered as her finger ran down between the blond's eyes, over her nose and across her lips. Mapping her features.

Tara let out a relieved sigh of a chuckle. A couple tears escaping blue eyes and dribbling down her chin. Willow trailed her fingers through them as they fell.

"You had us worried for a second there girl." Xander said as Buffy let go of the red-heads shoulders.

"Is she okay?" Dawn asked scooting closer

"How you feeling Willow?" Buffy asked hovering over Tara's shoulder.

Willow could hear worried voices but was mesmerised by the little wet drops streaking Tara's cheeks before she caught them.

"I'm fine." She said, more to the tears then to answer the multitude of questions.

She looked up to see the other's gathered around her.

"Really I'm fine." She said shakily. Tara's eyes where flicking all over her, checking for wounds, making sure she was alright. Tara was always looking after her.

And Willow suddenly remembered making a promise three years earlier. The night they'd met. Tara had snuck her into her bedroom after finding her in the library. Tara kept saying "I'll take care of you, don't be scared. There's nothing to be afraid of."

Willow was hiding in Tara's wardrobe; her Dad had seen them come in through the back and was yelling loudly.

"Where is it?! I sore you bring one of those things in my house!" he spat as he slammed the door open.

"No S-s-s-sir, I w-w-wouldn't d-dd-do..."

"Are you lying to me? Because I don't like to be lied too Tara, you know that." There was danger behind those words, but Willow couldn't tell if he was warning his daughter or threatening her.

"Am I going to find a demon in this room or not?" He asked with more control.

"N-Not, Sir." Tara whispered.

There was a few terrible seconds when Willow heard nothing at all, but could feel Tara's silent plea that the man would believe her.

"Open your dresser." He ordered, Tara hesitated.

"Open it!" he yelled. _Oh no. _

Willow heard footsteps draw nearer. She closed her eyes tightly as she backed through the wall with a shiver. And she heard the wardrobe doors being swung open but when she opened her eyes all she could see was the floral wallpaper of the room beside Tara's. She released the breath she'd been holding with a shudder.

"Well hello there." A gentle voice, Willow spun to see a middle-aged women with two faded blue eyes settled directly on her. The lady was braiding long blond hair into a rope.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. It was just getting awfully loud, and I don't want to cause any trouble... Tara doesn't even know me. I swear. I just followed her here this afternoon. Really, she had no idea about any of it. She's completely unaware of the whole me being here situation. Not that she's stupid or anything! I'm just sneaky, and bad, and leaving now...again so so sorry, it's all my fault, so don't blame Tara okay?" Willow finished the babble with a nervous look praying she was a somewhat convincing liar. She wasn't. That much was obvious when the women started quietly laughing.

"That's quite a mouthful." She smiled and Willow cringed, unable to know what to make of the response. There was a warmth about that smile that Willow recognised immediately.

"You're Tara's mum?" Willow asked shyly.

"What gave me away?" The women asked playfully, and Willow tried to ignore the yelling next-door and awkwardly looked at her feet.

"You share many of the same genetic traits. And your eyes both do this sparkly thing when you laugh that makes me feel better inside." Willow gulped, she couldn't seem to stop words pouring from her mouth. Mrs. Maclay grinned widely and Willow started to wonder if the older woman was teasing her.

"You sound like quite the budding biologist Miss...?"

"Oh, name, right...I guess I have one of those...somewhere." The man shouting at Tara was getting louder and Willow was having troubles concentrating on the conversation at hand.

"It's okay. He won't hurt her." Mrs. Maclay said as if reading her thoughts. Willow nodded a little but couldn't help flinching when she heard Tara saying "You can't touch that. It's mine." Followed by a crashing sound as something shattered on the floorboards.

" She hasn't mentioned you before, and we talk about everything, did you just meet?" Mrs Maclay asked.

"Yea we did, this afternoon...I didn't have anywhere else to go." She whispered.

"I know. It's okay sweetie, I won't tell anyone."

"Thank you." Willow smiled a little before she continued "Maybe I should get out of here before he comes back."

"Oh don't worry; he doesn't sleep in here honey, not for a long time... Can I ask you a question?"

"Anything." Willow replied.

"You feel drawn to my daughter don't you? Like something's pulling you together."

Willow nodded slowly "I do, but I don't know what it is..."

"It's okay, you don't have to understand everything all the time, something's are beyond that. But do you know what? I can feel it too. And I think you two should stick together, look out for each other, make sure she's not alone when..." For the first time the sadness behind Mrs Maclay's eyes spilt out in her voice as she trailed of mid-sentence. There was something mysteriously ominous about Tara's mother.

"I promise." Willow whispered, and she'd never meant anything more in her life.

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: Some light at the end of the tunnel in this one, lots of goodness, you guys have definitely earnt it. Let me know if it doesn't make any sense. Feedback = yay. **

**Disclaimer: Don't own anything but the story. **

**Thoughts in italics**

* * *

**Chapter 13: I think I'd like that. **

Willow was in her arms. Eyes closed peacefully as she gently rested her head into the crook of Tara's neck. It made Tara feel as if every atom crashing through her entire body all suddenly came to an abrupt halt and settled peacefully in her chest. All contentedly humming and sending the most thrilling little tingles through her cells._  
_

Tara was pulled from the pleasant sensation when she felt something cold, wet and sticky dribbling down her collar bone. The mysterious sludge was dripping out of Willow hair.

"We need to get you cleaned up." She whispered to the back of Willows head. The redhead shifted to look at the blonds stained shoulder.

"Tara..." Xander interrupted.

"What did you do?" he finished, Tara couldn't tell if the statement was meant as an accusation or a question. He was obviously referring to the spell she had just done...maybe spell was the wrong word for it. It was more an energy transference really. But at the moment that didn't matter, what mattered was that she'd saved Willow, she'd kept her safe.

"Not now okay? Later. We'll talk about it later." She couldn't pull her gaze from the quivering girl clutching as her arms. Willow looked so neglected. Tara couldn't believe that someone could just abandon her, the girl with the sweetest smile, the girl with the cutest freckles, the girl with the biggest eyes, soaking in filth on the side of the road. Tara closed her eyes tightly at the image in her mind, she had to be strong. _Breathe_, she reminded herself.

"Yea that sounds fair. I might get out of your way, I'll let Giles and Anya know the good news when I get home. I'll be round tomorrow to see if Amy's any better . You guys just worry about the black-inky-sludge detox." He said as he buttoned his coat. He was met with a chorus of "thanks" "night" "seeya" as he closed the door behind him.

" Dawnie could you get the warm water running in the shower for me?" Tara asked the teenager who nodded before bounding upstairs. Now all they had to do was get Willow to the bathroom.

"How we gonna do this?" Buffy asked rubbing her hands on her jeans, always looking for a game plan.

Tara looked tentatively at the girl in front of her. Willow was looking at Buffy and then the stairs, her lips pressed firmly together as if contemplating her options.

"Do you think you can stand?" Tara asked her.

"I guess we'll see..." She replied a little nervously. Tara tried to assure her with a gentle smile.

"Anyway I think I'm seeping into your couch cushions, wait any longer and I might become permanently glued to your furniture." Willow added lightly.

"Don't you dare, I don't even want to know how much it would cost to get a Willow sized lump upholstered to the side of that thing." Buffy joked and Tara marveled at how naturally Buffy interacted with the girl.

For three years Buffy had been guarded against Scarlet, the unexplainable ghost, the mystery the Scooby's never solved. But now she was Willow, the strawberry flower. A big bad waiting to happen. They knew this could only go two ways; Willow had a fifty percent chance of destroying them all. _Apparently those odds are good enough for Buffy._ Tara thought with a little smile, she could feel her heart swell with pride. Buffy was really the most extraordinary human being.

Buffy took Willows hands as Tara released the redhead.

"Count of three, ready?" She instructed.

Willow nodded a little apprehensively.

"Tara?" Buffy checked.

"Ready." Tara replied

"One, two, three." Buffy counted as she pulled Willow effortlessly from the couch, Tara held her hands on Willow's waist from behind as the redhead swayed a little on the spot.

"OOoo" Willow squeaked in an adorably innocent voice.

"Dizzy?" Tara asked from behind.

"Only in the literal sense." Willow answered leaning her weight on the other girls.

"Want to go back down?" Tara asked.

Willow shook her head

"That would be kinda counterproductive" She said ruefully.

"Want a lift?" Buffy asked turning so Willow could climb onto her back.

Willow hesitated.

"Come on, It's not like I'm not use to it, Dawn still makes me piggy back her up there sometimes when she gets sleepy!"

"Yea but she's like 15. "

"Hey if I remember correctly we still don't have an age bracket for you Missy." Buffy countered.

"I think I'm a little older than 15." Willow said with this adorably defensive expression, Tara was giggling.

"Get on." Buffy insisted lowering so the redhead could easily wrap her arms around the slayers neck. Willow shot one more _"do I really have to?"_ look at Tara before she shuffled onto Buffy's back. Tara couldn't seem to stop smiling. _She's the cutest._

As they made their way up the stairs she heard Willow grumble something and Buffy laugh as she said "You big baby." Tara laughed with them, it really didn't matter what had been funny in the first place, she was with her family and she was happy. _We got her back._ She kept thinking as she reached the top of the stairs.

Dawn flew unexpectedly from the linen cupboard holding an armful of fresh towels as she managed to doge her way around the others into the bathroom.

"I got the fluffiest ones. Mum use to say that they were strictly guest-only." Dawn yelled from the bathroom, presumably refereeing to the towels. They followed her into the small tiled room. It was already filled with warm mist, the shower was running and Dawn had written "Missed ya Willow!" in the fog on the mirror. Tara smiled, she was certain that the Summer's girls had the kindest hearts God had ever bestowed on anyone._  
_

* * *

Tara tried to memorize every single detail of what she sore before her. Willow held out her hands to catch the hot water as it hit her skin in drops, her clothes stuck to her in funny places and a pool of black watered ran off her body and swirled around the showers drain. It was the most beautiful sight, the type that makes you wonder how heaven could be any better than life here on earth. Pure bliss seeping from the redhead as she soaked up the warmth, eyes blinking against the water as she looked up into the spray. She was laughing, then poking her tongue out and letting the water trickle into her mouth. Tara was laughing too. It was the sort of simple joy that sweeps all who witness it off their feet and fills them up with hope for things to come.

She and Willow were standing, a little cramped, in the Summer's shower cubical. Fully dressed and completely soaked. Willow was still quite unsteady on her feet so they'd decided it would be best for her not to be alone on the slippery surface of the wet tiles. Good thing too, the redhead had already almost slipped over twice before Tara managed to catch her. These events didn't however seem to faze the redheads cheer.

Willow was spinning a little under the water, it reminded Tara of the way little children dance and splash about in the rain.

Then Willow looked at her. Her fiery hair falling over her eyes and clinging to her cheeks. Glowing like flecks of sunshine through the canopy of a forest. And everything stopped. All Tara was, all she'd ever been, was in that moment. Then Willow's face broke into the biggest smile and she scooped her hair away with her fingers.

"What?" Tara asked a little giddy. She had to know what caused Willow to light up like that.

"I can't believe you get to do this every day." Willow laughed the words out and closed her eyes as she lent her head back so that the water fell on her face. Tara couldn't tear her gaze from the way Willow's neck stretched gracefully exposing the creamy skin.

"What? Shower?" Tara asked. She was trying to focus, the mental image of her tongue running over Willow's throat was not helping. _Come on Maclay focus it can't happen she's..._and for the first time the answer wasn't _a ghost._ It was a pause, and in that pause Tara felt her feet shift the slightest amount before the multitude of reasons flooded her instantly. _She's vulnerable. She's your friend. You can't risk what you have. She's not gay. She's only been a human for 12hrs! For goodness sake stop staring at her! _

"Feel . Everything! Feel it all touching you everywhere all at once. It's like everything in the universe is connected, and it interacts and relates and now all of the sudden every little part of it is talking to me, sending me signals and...I'm not making sense at all am I?" Willow trailed off.

Tara knew she should tell Willow that what she was saying made perfect sense, and that it was beautifully insightful. And that she was constantly amazed that after all Willow had been through she was able to simply feel the comforting sensation of a hot shower after a long day and be happy. Buts Tara just waited for Willow to keep talking.

"See I didn't mean it was talking like...'hello Willow, I'm the soap dispenser, welcome to the physical plane'...more like...how it feels connects me to things that were just objects before. Like...water = warm...shampoo = foamy...sponge = squishy...tiles = hard...jacket = heavy...and kinda squelchy...actually now that I think about it the jackets really uncomfortable...it's all soggy and stiff, do you mind if I take it off?" Willow asked as she stepped forward to remove the garment and slipped over her own feet letting out a squeal.

Tara caught her with two firm hands.

"Thanks." Willow muttered a little embarrassed.

"You okay?" Tara checked tucking some stray hair behind Willow's ear. _Tara stop it _she reprimanded as she drew her hand away.

Willow noodled a little sheepishly.

"Floor = slippery." Tara said with a grin as she stabilized the girl.

"I'll try to remember that one." Willow chuckled.

Tara was struggling not to hold her hands out like a safety net in case Willow lost her balance again. She could see the slight girls knees shaking a little.

"Are you right to stay standing while I take this coat off?" Tara asked trying to think of the best way to free the redhead without knocking the girl off her feet. Willow was wearing her jacket. She'd thrown it over the shivering girl as they'd raced through the streets of Sunnydale earlier that night. It wasn't her favorite coat by far. It was kinda big and was made from this floppy grey material that never quite sat right. But it was comfy. And she had to smile at how the fabric hung on Willow's slight shoulders completely dwarfing the girl. _Adorable. _

"That should work." Willow replied, a little nervously.

Tara gave a reassuring smile as she quickly un did the buttons and threaded the redheads arm out of the first sleeve. She was a little surprised when she felt the Willow's hand grab her shoulder to hold herself up but managed to remove the coat without hassle revealing a pink three-quarter sleeved shirt that gathered at the front, a denim skirt and grey tights. In the three years that Tara had known Willow she'd worn that same outfit every single day. Ghosts can't change their clothes you see; but lucky for them they can't really get dirty either.

Tara twisted some of the water out of the coat before tossing it into the adjacent bathtub.

"Stockings next?" Willow's voice.

Tara nodded. _Wait what?_ But Willow was already squirming out of grey stockings; Tara quickly grabbed the other girls waist as the redhead stepped out of the material now gathered around her ankles. She kicked the little ball of grey to the edge of the shower cubical. _  
_

" I need to umm..." Willow was picking at her shirt and then shot Tara a little anxious look. _Oh..._It was an interesting predicament, Willow looked a little uncomfortable as she picked at the material. _She needs so take the rest off...obviously...I mean that is the idea of bathing...she needs to...oh. _

There's a sort of cruel irony in the way the sub-conscious part of your brain betrays the rest of you when you need it behave the most. Tara's brain was being flooded with hundreds and hundreds of mental images, all of Willow...who would soon be naked...and in the shower...with Tara. Some were memories and other's completely manufactured but what they all had in common was that none of them were welcome and all of them where arousing. _  
_

"H-how about I t-turn around while y-you um...and then I can p-pass you the t-towel?" Tara offered. _  
_

"Okay." Willow nodded, green meeting blue. Tara turned around and looked at her feet. _Just breathe._

It was the longest most overwhelmingly erotic three minutes of Tara's life. Which she realized might seem a bit pathetic. She'd had sex before, shouldn't that have been more stimulating then standing here, back turned listening to a girl peel layers of clothes off? But it wasn't even close. Tara could feel everything, her spirit, her mind, her emotions all yearning together in unison for the same thing. She's was so close_._ _Willow._ The girl who had always been out of reach, broken-space under fingertips. So close.

_Just breathe_

Willow was making quiet little grunts as she struggle out of her shirt and Tara had to squeeze her eyes closed, she was overwhelmed with longing, it was almost to much to handle.

"Ouch." She heard Willow whisper under her breath.

"Y-y-you okay?" Tara asked. She was surprised she had the ability to talk. _  
_

"Hmm" Willow hummed. Tara wished she hadn't. _This is torture. _

It was hard to stay still, everything in her was burning. And suddenly a hand curled around her shoulder and she realized Willow probably needed her for balance as she stepped out of her underwear.

And Tara couldn't breathe.

She couldn't stand still.

She wasn't going to keep this together.

Not when it was Willow.

She was going to loose control.

She needed to touch her, needed to touch her everywhere.

No going back.

She spun around with one fluid movement, fully intending to take what she needed, regardless the consequences.

And then she sore her. And all she could taste was strawberries.

The happy girl soaking up the warmth and dancing under the shower's spray was gone. And in her place a pale figure with a solemn expression.

Willow hadn't seen Tara turn, she was just standing alone examining a deep cut that ran down the length of her arm. A mixture of shock and fear in her eyes. A red slice in skin from her inner elbow to her lower wrist. Tara realized Willow must have noticed it when she removed her shirt. The wound looked as if perhaps it was self inflicted, but Tara knew better then that. _Rack. He must have done a ritual that needed blood. The blood of a strawberry flower. _

Tara suddenly felt as if she was violating the vulnerable girl shaking in the water dressed only in a bra and panties. Immense shame washed over her as she spun quickly around. In that moment she felt as if she was drowning in guilt.

_I didn't have the right to see that._ She felt herself shudder a little.

_Poor Willow._ She wanted to face the redhead. She wanted to hold her hand. Wanted to say something. Wanted to help.

_She looked so lost._

After a while of silence the shower stopped running and Tara passed Willow the towel, she helped her get dressed. Dawn had left all the essentials; jumpers, fluffy socks, sweat pants even some mittens and a beanie. Once dressed Willow waited outside the bathroom as Tara quickly washed and changed. They made there way, all rugged up, to Joyce's old room where Tara finally broke the silence.

"You want to talk about it?" She asked kindly. She wanted to be vague, after-all she didn't know what was going on in the redheads mind.

Willow shook her head in response.

Tara was bracing her forearms under Willow's to support some of the slight girl's weight. She could feel the mitten covered fingers grasping the inside of her elbows and when she looked up she sore green eyes concentrating intently on sock-clad feet.

_It'd probably be best if I sleep on the couch. _Tara decided.

_She needs space._ But it wasn't just that. For the first time it wouldn't just be a girl and a ghost hovering over the sheets. It would be two people laying beside each other. Sleeping together. And as much as Tara tried to tell herself that that's all it would be to her, two people sharing space, she knew she'd be lying. It would be everything she ever wanted.

_I may never get to sleep in the same bed as her again. _It was a devastating realization.

She never slept well without Scarlet there. The first time Tara ever slept through an entire night was the night they'd first met. Her father had caught her trying to smuggle Willow into the house. He'd pulled her room apart, smashing trinkets and tearing posters off the walls, but he couldn't find a single trace of evidence that a demon had been there. Tara didn't know whether to be shocked or relieved when he flung open her wardrobe door and the ghost-girl wasn't there. She'd known the mysterious redhead for less then an hour, she'd snuck her from the library and was planning to hide her until she could ask Mr Giles what they should do.

And now she was gone. All that was left was an empty oak wardrobe and a mess of broken things on her floor.

Tara was crouched, dust pan and brush in hand, sweeping what was left of her grandmother's old cherub figurines from the floorboards, and being quietly thankful she'd hidden the dolls-eye crystal safely away in the attic when they'd moved houses. She felt a little bit like Cinderella, except... her farther was alive, her mother was incredible and she had no evil step sisters, just one bully of a brother. Okay now that she thought about it Cinderella had an up on her when it came to bad living conditions - a Father with a temper and a bit of demon in her DNA, wasn't exactly tragic. Plus she wasn't really into the whole Prince thing. She shook her head of the thought.

_Don't even go there Maclay. _That was just one complication she couldn't deal with right now. The only problem was that she really didn't seem to have a choice on the matter.

"Come on there's lots of good things about boys." She muttered to herself, Buffy was always talking about guys at school, it had to rub off right?

"There all tall, and strong and smelly..." Tara cringed, she wasn't great at this.

"Just avoid armpit hair...and chest hair...and Adam's apples...and stubble...and anything...remotely...masculine." She let out and exasperated sigh. Slid the contents of the dust pan in the bin and flopped backwards on her bed.

"What's wrong with me!" She groaned covering her face with her hands. She then punched into the mattress a couple of times to relieve some built up frustration before she lay defeated on the sheets. _Why can't I just be normal?! S_he was upset, she missed her Grandmother, she hated that in three years she'd be twenty, she was angry that her farther had scared away her friend. The red haired girl had been so helpless and afraid. And Tara knew she was meant to find her. She knew she was the one who was suppose to take care of her.

_Now she's gone, probably forever, shes out there all alone. She doesn't know what's happening. I can't believe I just LET her be alone. I practically abandoned her! What was I thinking trying to sneak her in here?! Of course father would be waiting for me, he always waits when I'm late. _Tara had never felt that miserable in her life. She kept imagining the slight girl with long red hair crouched in a ball on the floor. Her arms gripping her legs tightly to her chest and the biggest green eye's calling out for Tara to save her.

It was then that Tara caught a tinge of red out of the corner of her eye, and the taste of strawberries on her tongue. She sat up hastily and crossed her legs under herself.

The girl was just standing there by the wardrobe.

_She's back. She's okay. She's back. __Oh thank God she's okay. _Everything okay. 

"Hi." The girl whispered offering the cutest little half wave ever.

"Hi." Tara replied. _She's absolutely adorable. _

"Are you okay?" The redhead asked gently, Tara liked the way her eyes seemed to scream the honesty behind her concern. They were captivating.

"Y-yea." Tara swallowed; she was in real danger of losing herself in those pools of green. _Breathe.  
_

"Where'd you go?" Tara managed to ask.

"Oh. I um sorta backed through the wall..." The petite girl looked to the wardrobe.

"Mama's room?"

" Aha. She's really nice. I like her alot. You guys have the same smile. Well not literally of course because you know, freaky, but like the way you smile. It um. It's nice." The redhead babbled a little.

Tara gestured that the ghost sit on the bed with her.

"I'm really sorry I made your Dad mad at you." the redhead whispered.

Tara lay down, flicked off the light and got comfortable.

"You didn't make him do anything."She replied. As Willow's head came to hover next to Tara's on the pillow. It was only a single bed, but neither of them were particularly large people. And Tara liked that they were close. It let her focus on specific features of the other girls face. Like her pink lips, her faintly freckled blushing cheeks and the way her long eyelashes faded into blond so that the ends were almost invisible.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" the redhead whispered as though it was a secret.

"You're pretty easy to be nice too." Tara said sincerely.

They smiled at each other in the shadows. There was a rumble downstairs as Donny's car roared in the driveway. Then suddenly everything was cold and stiff, Tara realized it was the other girls aurora filling the room around them.

"What is it?" Tara asked.

"Something's really wrong with me isn't it..." the petite girl swallowed back her emotions.

"Do you think I'm something evil? Something bad?" She finished in a shaky voice.

And Tara's felt her soul ache at the familiarity of the statement.

"I think you're a beautiful young girl with extra-flamey red hair, who hasn't quite found her place in the world yet, just like everyone else on the planet." As Tara finished the statement and the lost girls composure broke as a relieved sob of a giggle.

"That's all I've got for you right now." Tara added with a smile.

When Tara looked up green eyes met her own and they were brimming with tears, she had wanted to touch wet cheeks so badly.

_I did that. _Tara's heart skipped a beat.

"I could kiss you just now, you know that?" Willow was still laughing to herself whilst mopping her eyes with her sleeve. It was the sort of light statement that probably meant nothing at all. _  
_

"I think I'd like that." Tara heard herself whisper. And for the first time since she'd caught herself thinking about girls Tara had said something that gave herself away. It was out there, floating around in the universe. It was real. Forever buzzing in the ears of the nameless red-head lying beside her.

"Me too." Was the almost inaudible reply that came from the shadow's of the room.

And Tara slept, and she didn't wake up till a quarter to eight the next morning.

"Am I hurting you?" Willow's worried voice shot through the memory and brought Tara back to the present. They were almost at Mrs Summer's old bed.

"What?" Tara said a little disorientated.

Willow's eyes weren't watching wobbly sock-clad feet anymore but focused intensely on Tara.

"Oh no. I was just. I was just thinking." Tara stumbled out. It was hard to talk when Willow looked at her like that.

"What about?" the redhead pushed. _Always wants to know everything about everything. _

"Another time maybe." Tara smiled hoping this didn't seem harsh.

They shuffled back a few more steps.

"Almost there." Tara said patiently as she backed into the soft mattress and begun to help the red head turn.

They landed safely on the mattress. Tara flicked the bedside light off, pulled the quilt and blankets open and helped Willow slide in under them.

Just as she was about to leave the dark room she felt delicate finger's wrapped around her lower back and gently draw her down into the bed with a gentle tug. The fluid motion slipping her snugly into Willow's side.

Tara couldn't move. Couldn't talk. Couldn't think. The hand on her back was sending tingles through her spine that buzzed through her entire body. _  
_

Willow's turned to touch her face, her thumb rubbing soft circles against Tara's cheek and her fingers shifting gently through blonde hair._  
_

"Night Tara." She whispered.

Then Willow pressed the most feather-light lingering kiss on Tara's forehead. Slid her hand from Tara's jaw, down her arm and clutched the material of Tara's sweat shirt as she buried her self into Tara's neck. Willow's limbs and torso all curled into a ball and wrapped into the shape of Tara's waist as she shuffled closer still.

Tara was holding her breathe. Afraid to shatter the illusion.

She could feel the redhead's aurora pouring through and dissolving into her own so that she could no longer tell where Willow started and she ended. Everything tasted like sweet strawberries, and Tara had never felt more alive. It was as if every happy thought she'd ever had twisted like rays of sunshine through her soul and shone brightly from her center.

Nothing could feel this good.

Nothing could feel so right, so meant to happen, so perfect.

No two people could fold so naturally into each other.

Fit like broken pieces, finally finding where they belonged.

It just wasn't possible.

It just couldn't be real.

But it was.

Suddenly Willow's grasp loosen a little and Tara was brought back to her senses.

With one certain movement she wrapped her arms firmly around Willow's slight figure pressed her mouth against red hair and whispered

"Goodnight Willow." as she pressed a kiss into Willow's hairline.

Tara fell asleep smelling the vanilla scented shampoo she'd rinsed through Willow's hair earlier, tasting strawberries and feeling Willow's breath the skin of her neck.

TBC


	14. Chapter 14: Scary Thoughts

**AN: Sorry for the wait! I've had study blinkers on all week. But assignments are all submitted, exams are all over, and so I'm back in action. **

**As always thoughts are in italics. Originally I was going to try and make this huge narrative leap with this chapter, but I think you really need some explanations first, so here some are. And I promise alot will happen next chapter! Please let me know what you think :-) Enjoy! **

* * *

**Chapter 14: Scary thoughts**

Giles was rubbing the wrinkles that had taken up permanent residence on his forehead as he hunched over a cold cup of tea, . He then let out an exaggerated yawn, shifted the stiffened muscles of his shoulders, re-positioned his glasses and continued reading The Tale of the Strawberry Flower.

He really didn't need to re-read the text anymore, he'd memorized every word of the parable hours ago.

It wasn't even a particularly cryptic passage.

It's symbolism was obvious, crude almost.

Scarlet was a being of unspoken potential. And her path was either one of great destruction or one of healing.

_Great darkness, great light, in a moment decided. _

_In a moment decided. _That troubled Giles.

Because if that moment had come and gone, then there was nothing to be done. Well one thing...Giles cringed.

_They're really not going to like that. _

And why would they? It wasn't their way of doing things. It never had been.

The slayer doesn't stop things that _could _end the world. The slayer stops the world from ending.

_But she's a source. A human source. Even if, and that's if, she somehow overcomes the black magicks Rack is undoubtedly pouring into her every second he holds her captive, she'll still be a conduct. A beacon. A channel for all things un-holy and holy alike. _

_And they'll come for her, every demonic beast, ever living God, every witch, every warlock, every human who craves power, they'll come. And they'll never stop until there's nothing left but an enchanted vessel of skin and bones. Because even if she may choose the way of light, others will seek her out and use her for darkness. _

Giles shook his head in defeat.

_There is simply no saving her. Only preventing the destruction she shall inevitably cause, by her will or another. _He took a deep breath. _They're really not going to like that._

And he didn't either. Scarlet was, _no Willow, if your going to kill her then at least show the courtesy to use her real name! _She was._..the best of all of us. _

He swallowed, he'd never meant to grow attached to the ghost who hovered about his library all day while the others took class. Who'd talked him through how to operate that wretched computer, and even guided him through firewall after firewall of governmental databases to get information they required. Who'd distracted countless vampires, demons, hell even principle Snyder, when ever they'd needed a distraction most. Who told them where the initiative was after the commandos tried to capture her. Who'd burst into the Magic Box last year screaming "GLORY'S GOT DAWN AT THE HOSPITAL!" and who was the only one who could keep Tara calm after she'd lost her mind.

Giles covered his mouth and shook his head slightly. This wasn't right. This wasn't what being a Watcher was about.

_If found but what an innocent plant, whose fate is not determined. For you, dear friend, what must occur for justice to remain on course? The age-long quest, un-ending doubt, what shall she be, what is to come. So ask yourself, what can you see, is it cobwebs or is it silk?_

It was as if the tattered pages addressed him directly. Mocking him with the truth. The only chance they had to stop Willow was before she became something that needed to be stopped. She was just that..._an innocent plant. _

_There has to be another way._ Giles thought. But if there was, he couldn't see it.

_Ring Ring_

He shot his head up. _That can't be the phone. It's..._he glanced at the antique clock on his lounge room wall, _ three fifteen in the morning! _

_Ring Ring. _

He was stumbling towards it on weary legs.

"What kind of inconsiderate, socially-inept cretin, dares call a man at this un-godly hour!?" He mumbled as he reached the handset.

"Giles?" Xander's voice.

"That kind." Giles mumbled rolling his eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing Xander, what in God's name is it?" Giles snapped impatiently.

"Scarlet...Willow...the formally formless...she's back. Buffy and Tara they found her on patrol tonight."

"She escaped Rack?" Giles asked doubtfully.

"No. Well I don't know. We didn't get to the explanations, they wanted to clean her up a bit first. She was covered in this black stuff, like all over. Head to toe. She looked really bad Giles." _She can't stay there. _

"I need to see her immediately, she isn't safe to be around. And if she's un-well I may be able to..."

"That's a no go." Xander interrupted. _Which is just so typical._

"I beg you pardon?"

"Tara says we can do the Scooby thing tomorrow. Tonight they're just trying to become less gooey. And she's not sick anymore...Tara she um did some magic mojo, fixed her up real fast...it was a little weird Giles. It wasn't like the normal, chant chant, sprinkle some rainbow powder kinda spell. It was different. She just...made it happen. And she kept saying sorry to Scarlet like she was...I mean Willow! She kept saying sorry to Willow!" Xander groaned.

"And she seemed...nomal?" Giles hesitated.

"Well a little shaken up. But yea. Same old cute little redhead. Except you know...without the ghostlyness."

"And she's staying at Buffy's? She's there right now?" Giles asked, he supposed that they're wouldn't be much harm in waiting one night. Especially if Scarlet wasn't dark yet. _Willow._ He reminded himself, but for some reason it was harder to stomach the thought of hurting Willow the lost girl then Scarlet the mystery ghost.

"She was there when I left." Xander answered.

* * *

Willow thrashed and metal cuffs tore into her wrists with the force of the movement. She threw her weight forwards in an effort to break free, her arms jarring awkwardly against invisible bonds.

"Welcome back." A horse eerie voice slithered through the air.

Willow recognized it immediately. _Rack. _

She focused her eyes and realized she was looking down on him from above, and for the briefest moment Willow wondered if she was in the sky.

But then she sore exotic throw pillows scattered over carpeted floors, a round table shaped like a cog, and pictures hanging from the walls that were torn and ripped as if clawed by an animal. The place looked uncared for, as if uninhabited. Even the wall paper was shredded and peeling away.

But it was all bellow her, as if she were...

"On the ceiling sweetness. You're on the ceiling. " Rack purred.

"You're in my head?" Willow whispered with a tinge of horror. She didn't like the idea of someone reading her mind.

"Wouldn't matter much if I was, now would it? Little ghost little ghost no memories to hide." Rack clicked his tongue and chucked to himself.

"My friends..."

"You banished them. Good thing to, I was starting to forget what I'd come for. Getting caught up in the thrill of the chase and all that. " His silver eye flared dangerously as he spoke.

There was a silence and Willow wanted to ask if they were safe. But something told her that even if Rack knew he wouldn't tell her. So she decided on a different approach.

"What did you come for?" She asked after a moment.

"Waste not want not, I told you through the rat." He spat impatiently.

Willow thought for a moment, it had been a long day.

"...a message for an old friend. You came to give me a message?" Willow proceeded cautiously.

"Clever girl. Clever flower. Will she prosper, or devour." He sang through a merciless grin. It was an unsettling tune.

Rack had something in his hands, but Willow couldn't make it out from this angle. She took a deep breath and puffed her chest out as if to look intimidating. _Need to be brave. _

"I want you to put me down. Put me down and I'll hear your message." She said clearly. But her whole being quivered as she spoke.

"Very well." He purred.

"Cado." Racks voice was casual as he cast the spell dropping Willow heavily onto the floor. She staggered to her feet.

"Laqeuem." He commanded and she was slammed to a wall, arms and legs splayed out and pulled straight.

She gasped, suffocating, the air sucked from her lungs. Then panted heavily as she regained her breath. And Rack shot across the room to push himself into her helpless form. He sniffed at her mouth as if to greedily inhale the air that escaped her lips. Willow lent her head as far away as possible and held her breath for as long as she was able. Rack threaded his tongue through crooked teeth, his eyes dancing over Willows face, and he took one last deep breath through his nose as if to smell her scent his eyes closing in perverse pleasure.

"Hmmm." He sighed.

His eyes shot open as silver disks. An a erratic fizzle of energy buzzed under his finger tips as they traced the outline of Willows figure. Willow just held still against the wall.

"The message?" She whispered tightly. Praying that it might keep him away. There were no words to express how much Willow disliked the way Rack was looking at her. She felt utterly exposed, violated, powerless.

"Oh sweetness. Old friends like us have to get reacquainted before we start making our place known. Have to get a feel for each other again." He hissed stroking finger down Willows neck then pressing sharply into her pulse point. His nail sinking through skin. She squirmed a little.

"I'd like to hear what you came to say...please." She croaked through a semi occluded voice box.

Rack smiled, jabbed his fingers into her carotid artery one last time for good measure, then drew away slowly. Willow could feel her pulse bounding where his fingers had bruised her neck. She was trying not to stare at the scars that adorned his battered face, a lifetime of battle wounds etched into his features.

"I'll have you soon enough. I'll have you when I'm thirsty." Rack hissed.

He was toying with her. She knew it, he knew it. It was just a matter of time before the toying was over and the rules of the game were abandoned. _Play along. _She kept thinking. She could smell the dark magicks on him: sooty, bitter, dry.

"But you're not thirsty now?" Willow half-asked half-stated.

"I'm always thirsty for strawberry juice." He purred.

Willow stilled.

"But that's not why you came." She said quietly.

"No." Rack admitted.

A distorted grin covered Rack's scared mouth and Willow tried to hide how much that smile unsettled her.

"It tastes purest when it fresh, and it's freshest when it's willingly. And I have what will make you willing." He purred.

"What do you have?" She asked in a little voice.

"All in good time sweetness. All in good time." He replied with a slithering twist.

The dingy room fell quite. _I have to get back. Have to get back to Tara._

"Please, tell me why I'm here." Willow requested in a little voice.

"You and I have a little arrangement in the real world, an understanding." Rack hummed as he spoke.

Willow couldn't suppress a shutter. _  
_

"What are you going to make me do?" Willow didn't really want to know the answer to that. But she had to know. It was the only way to keep the others safe.

"Curiosity killed the cat." Rack spat bluntly.

There was a silence and Rack was fiddling with the object in his hands when the silver blade shimmered in the light..._a knife. He has a knife. _Willow realized.

_And I'm very knifeable now. _

_All flesh and blood. _

_And his going to kill me. _

_And I only got to be alive for a second. _

_And there were so many things I wanted to do once I found my body. _

_I didn't even get to hug someone I cared about,_

_ or try spaghetti and meat balls with the secret ingredient, _

_or feel the sun on my skin, _

_or the wind in my hair,_

_ or ask Dawnie to show me how to draw those little roses she's always doodling in her notebooks,_

_or dust my first vampire,_

_or wear a pretty dress that makes someone go all none-verbal,_

_or feel snug as a bug all tucked up in bed, and what does that even mean? Are bugs somehow innately snug?! And how come they get to know how it feels to be snug and warm and real and I never do! _

_AND I didn't even get the chance to kiss her! _Willow slammed her head against the wall she was pinned too in frustration.

She'd had a rough life. Well what she could remember of it anyway. But this. Knowing she was so close to it all, and that she'd never make it. It was rock bottom._ Well...rock bottom until he starts making me kill off the people I love one by one or forces me to summon some apocalyptic beastie that swallows the world up in one big gulp. _

Willow sighed internally.

_I just. I really really really wanted to kiss her. Just once. I just wanted to kiss her once. And then I'd be done. Then they could drag me off to whatever hell dimension I came from and never look back. I just wanted to kiss her once. _

"I dont' get that saying...I mean presumably the cat died because it acted on curiosity without observing the danger of a situation. I just asked you a question, what's the danger in that?" Willow asked. Nerves wobbling her voice.

"Oh my naive little delicate wallflower." Rack purred. And as he stalked towards her as if cornering his prey, Willow suddenly wished she'd kept her mouth shut.

Rack leaned closer and sniffed Willow neck, nudging at her like a dog. Then he brought his lips to her ears and whispered.

"You're not ready, not sweet enough yet. But no matter, I'm a very patient man, l can wait till you're ripe, I've been waiting a long time for this." His voices lingered as he slowly sliced the blade into his own palm, digging it into his skin, and black ink split from the wound and trickled along the blade. His eyes never leaving Willow as smiled an whispered.

"Your turn."

Willow whimpered softly in fear.

_"_Scarlet?"She heard a sleepy question, but it was out of place, she hadn't heard that then had she? _No, now he melts me into black ink. _Wait, how did she know what was supposed to happen?

"Willow?" It didn't fit. That voice, that soothing voice didn't belong here.

_No. He didn't melt me then, first he drags the dagger down my arm, bleeds me into a vile...why does he need the blood? _

"Willow, wake up" A more urgent version of the soothing voice pleaded. _No, it was just us, Rack and I, no kind voices, soon he pushes his palm into my arm and squeezes, makes the blood mix. It hurt, burned, blistered. I felt him leave a mark._ She moaned painfully.

_"_It's not real. Sweetie, you have to wake up." And her shoulders were being shaken as images of Rack, blood and pools of black ink faded into a dark room as her blurred vision returned.

"You're asleep. Whatever you're seeing it's just a dream. You're safe in bed." The soothing voice was saying. And Willow believed it even though she wasn't sure where it was coming from. Everything was the same shade of deep shadow and dark blue.

"Where..." She stared, her own voice thick and drowsy.

"Buffy's house. We brought you back here and fell asleep after your shower. Remember?" Tara said helpfully. Willow still couldn't see but she knew it was Tara. Of course it was Tara.

And Tara was gently squeezing her arm as if to pull Willow back to reality, to lightly wake her from the nightmare.

_We're in bed. Mrs Summer's old room. _

Willow nodded that she remembered, and her head rustle the fabric of the pillowcase.

"Bad dream?" Tara asked while letting her long fingers brush red hair out of Willow's face.

_So close_ Willow realized as she breathed in deep. She could see little shimmers of light looking down on her, light reflecting off blue eyes.

_So close. _Tara's hand came to linger in her hair and it sent tingles through Willow's scalp as fingers softly shifted underneath. She lent into Tara's palm.

_So close. _It was the most comforting sensation. Everything was calm and warm. And Willow felt as if the world stilled as her breathing slowed and her heart relaxed.

_Safe._

"Yea. Well l um...I think so." Willow replied, a little confused.

"Don't know so?" The soothing voice pressed.

"Maybe...is it a dream if your just remembering something that happened, and it feels like it's happening again? Or is it just a memory that your brains replaying when your asleep? Like reliving it or something? Would you call that a dream?" Willow trailed off.

Most people might have laughed at her irrelevant fixation with definitions or jumpy train of thought, but Tara wasn't most people. And she seemed to understand that this was serious, despite Willow quirkiness.

"I think it's still a dream...was it about Rack?" Tara asked gently.

Willow nodded. Her head was still all jumbled up between the nightmare and the warm bed. _  
_

"Are you okay?" Tara asked quietly.

"Yea." _I'm always okay when I'm with you. _Willow's brain suddenly processed that she was curled tightly into Tara's side, hands clutching the material of her seat shirt and one of her legs had bent itself over Tara's thigh pulling it into the twisted ball of limbs that made up Willow's sleeping position.

She had essentially trapped Tara tightly beside her in a way that seemed far to interment for two friends. _Especially when one of you is secretly harboring three years of unrequited love for the other who is currently not single..._

"Sorry" Willow muttered embarrassed as she tried to unwrap herself without inappropriately rubbing against Tara. It would be easier to do, if every basic instinct in her body wasn't screaming at her to do just that. To feel any sort of physical contact. To hold on tightly and never let go for anything.

"Don't be silly. I'll take whatever I can get from the cuddles department." Tara joked as she gave the redheads arm a little squeeze sending a little spark buzzing down her arm to the very tips of her fingers. Tara could always do that. She always knew exactly what to say to make anyone feel at ease. It was one of the reasons Willow loved her so much. _One out of like a bizzillion cadrillion flobadagillion million trillion..._

"Are you still cold? Your shaking a little." Tara's voice was thick with concern.

"No." Willow shook her head then continued.

"Just a bit wired, I think the dream kinda got me all adrenalin-boosted." She offered a weak-heated smile.

"Scary thoughts?" Tara asked gently, and Willow felt the blonde tug her closer.

"Not any more." She said quietly into Tara neck as she snuggle into the embrace.

Willow inhaled the deepest, freshest breath of coconut soap and sandalwood shampoo. She could smell Tara's skin, the faint natural sweetness of it's milky surface. She exhaled a little shakily and hoped it didn't give her away.

She shouldn't be doing his. Tara didn't want her that way.

But it was instinct.

It was right.

It was where she was meant to be, always and forever.

Tara was absentmindedly stroking her hair and tracing little circles on her back.

Willow closed her eyes and tried to absorb every pleasant sensation all at once.

Three years was a long time to wait to be real.

But she'd wait another sixty if she knew that Tara would hold her like this again. She'd wait an eternity if she had to. Because this was worth it all. That moment was , without a second of hesitation, without a hint of regret, without a doubt in Willow's mind worth all the time in the world

And deep down she knew that Tara must feel it too.

A connection like they had, it couldn't just be one-sided, it couldn't just be the lonely ghost girl pinning over the kindhearted witch. Willow couldn't just be imaging it. It was beyond her imagination.

It was too strong.

It held them tightly, washed over them, submerged them completely.

They were tied to each other, anchored in place.

_I really really really want to kiss her._ Willow thought as she let her self drift back to sleep in Tara's arms.

_Tomorrow, I don't care what else happen's. I don't care if the sky starts falling and the earth implodes into tiny little pieces. I'm kissing her tomorrow. _

TBC


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: This isn't exactly where I wanted to end this chapter, but I wanted to put something up for you guys as I worked on the rest. So here it is. I pinky promise W/T goodness next update! Let me know what you think! **

**Disclaimer: The story is my story, the character's in it are not, but I promise to treat them nicely and return them in better condition than I got them in.**

******[sidenote] if anyone 's interested in being my proof reader/ advice giver just send me a message, I could really use a second opinion and another set of eyes checking over chapters before I post. At the moment I just skim what I've written and I'm sure you've probably already noticed I'm no grammatical genius. Thanks :)**

* * *

**Chapter 15: Unattainable**

Tara had always been one of those people who sore beneath layers of small talk and daily routines to what really matters. To what drove people to act how they did, the motivation behind the words that they said, the grounding essence that guided every thought, every belief, every smile. She understood that when you stripped away the sense of duty, the heart-ache and the doubts, what you have left is a spirit. Living and longing for freedom to thrive. And she thought that perhaps that's what heaven was, just a place for free spirits unrestrained of pain and insecurities to simply be themselves uninhibited by anything that taints and twists them into the desperate souls they are on earth.

But today she hadn't the slightest clue of what was going on in Willow's head.

The redhead was hugging Tara's right arm tightly as if claiming the limb as her own and her head had fallen lazily onto Tara's shoulder. They were both slouched into the Summer's sofa, cartoons flickering on the TV screen in front of them. It was a ridiculously early time of the morning. But they'd sorta drifted awake as the sun rose and made their way down stairs shortly after. Tara had been the one who suggested they get out of bed, in all honesty it was more because she needed a moment to compose herself then the fact that the idea of 5:00AM Looney-Toons was that appealing.

_She just kept looking at me, and I kept looking at her. And I can't..._The blonde shook her head a little to stop her thoughts before she got carried away. It was becoming an increasingly difficult thing to do.

Tara was immensely worried; she'd woken last night to whimpers and moans as the little redhead curled herself tighter and tighter into a ball.

_He was tormenting her, Rack, even in her dreams he was there, haunting her, playing tricks in her mind..._

_She seems better this morning._

Tara appraised the girl beside her, she was a little out of focus because of their proximity, but Tara could still see the fear below the surface as green eyes drifted back and forth following bugs-bunnyfrom one side of the TV to the other. And even as she lent into Willow's body, wrapped snugly in blankets they'd dragged form Mr's Summer's old bed , she knew Willow wasn't hers, could never be hers, she was a source. And no matter how effortlessly normal it felt to be tucked alongside eachother, lazily enjoying Saturday morning, it wasn't real, it could never be real.

_But she feels like she's mine. _It was a crazy admission, even Tara knew that.

Willow had started distractedly playing with the sleeve of her jumper as she became more engrossed in the TV.

_And she keeps touching me._ It was hard (really hard) for Tara to just sit there, not to move nearer, to press closer and closer.

But it wasn't her right. When she closed her eyes she could stills see a semi naked Willow, drenched by the shower, examining the bloody wound that ran down the length of her arm as she'd spun around to "seize the day".

Willow wasn't something to be seized.

She was precious.

And she was dangerous.

That was the truth, and despite the fact that Tara knew this could go one of two ways she vowed to herself then and there that she would take care of that girl. None of this was her fault, and whatever Powers That Be concerned had no right making her something she never asked to be.

It wasn't fair. Willow never hurt anyone. Never even tried.

_She's not just some flower with a sealed fate. _

_Or some magical beacon waiting to be abused._

_She's my girl._

_My adorable, complicated, sweet girl._

_ Who chased after me when my mother died, looked after me when Glory took my mind and tells the story of the The Hunchback of Notre-Dame with a happy ending._ _And they can't take her away, I need her, we all need her, and she need's us. We're family. We're suppose to look out for each other! We're demon fighter's we're suppose to fix things like this! That's how we work, we find big supernatural problems and we fix them! And we can't fix this, nothing can, nothing can make this better! And this can't be happening. _

_And this would all be a lot easier if I didn't love her so dam much! _Tara froze**. **

_Oh._ Ironically that realization aligned perfectly with bugs bunny dropping a piano on Yosemite Sam's head. Tara looked at Willow as if to check if the thought had somehow reached the girl. It seemingly hadn't. Willow was cupping her hand over a yawning mouth as she absent-mindedly tunneled a little further into Tara's shoulder.

_I've never thought that before._ It wasn't that Tara didn't know, of course she did. But she'd been avoiding thinking it directly for so long that the truth sunk heavily into her skin and simmered deeper still.

_So apparently I'm admitting that to myself now..._

She released a long slow breath.

It was liberating.

Honesty always is.

So Tara let herself go.

_Of course you're in love with her. How is anyone not in love with her?_

The way she spoke, almost quirky and undeniably sincere.

The way her freckles marked her skin like constellations, Tara knew them all, the faded specs on her nose the pale dot on the back of her hand.

The way she devoted her entire attention to whatever she was doing, even the simplest things. Always completely consumed by a task.

The way she was so childishly curious, always wanting to know how things worked, what made them tick.

The way she sore the world, as if it was all little puzzles and theory's floating through space.

The way she completely embodied whatever emotion she was feeling, it was in the expression on her face, her posture, her tone. Willow couldn't just be happy, she personified the essence of happiness.

_It's beautiful, she's beautiful. She's..._

Willow's hand had somehow worked its way down Tara's sleeve and to her fingers. She was tracing their outline and trailing shapes into Tara's palm and around her wrist.

It tingled, and sent the most stimulating tickling sensation right up Tara's arm and into her chest. But when Tara looked at the petite girl, quite at home snuggled into her shoulder, she realised that the redhead was still engrossed in whatever dastardly retaliation Yosemite Sam was planning in order to have his revenge on the grey rabbit.

_She probably doesn't even realize she'd doing it._ Tara rationalized. It made sense, Scarlet was a ghost for three years, that would be enough to make the most hardened individual crave physical contact. And Willow wasn't hard.

_She's soft and sweet. _

Willow giggled at the cartoons and drew Tara our of her thoughts.

Tara turned to the laughing redhead and smiled broadly at the girl, as Willow shifted her cheek from Tara's shoulder just long enough to rest her chin there instead. Happy green eyes flicked up to meet Tara's and Willow grinned like a chesia cat up at her.

"It's funny because it doesn't make any sense." She whispered cheekily.

"You don't make any sense." Tara retorted quickly through a chuckle.

"Do too." Willow challenged snuggling so close that their noses bumped.

She stayed like that, stayed close, for longer than Tara expected.

And the atmosphere shifted ever so slightly, and playful green eyes melted into intense deep forests of unending abyss.

"Prove it." Tara said gently. She was lost in it all, and she never wanted to come back.

And everything was still. Everything was waiting. The whole world stopped spinning on its axel in anticipation.

_Unattainable._ A little voice whispered in the back of Tara's mind, but it was easy to ignore when Willow was looking at her like that, the way eyes traveled all over, from mouth, too hair and back up to meet her gaze.

There was so much emotion there, everything pouring into two shimmering discs of green depth. Tara could see it, could feel it, was consumed by it.

"Will?" Perhaps it meant: _what are you doing? _Perhaps it meant: i_s this okay? _Perhaps it meant:_ Please can I? _Perhaps it meant:_ are you sure? T_ara would never really know what that syllable had meant, but she would never forget that that was the first time she'd called Willow Will.

Of course at the time a simple nickname didn't seem that momentous.

Because that was when they started leaning closer.

* * *

Giles and Xander were half asleep, and uncomfortably cold as they sat on the Summer's front porch. They'd been they're through the latest hours of night and the earliest of morning.

_I'm really getting to old for this._ Giles thought regretfully as he attempted to massage his stiffened shoulder._  
_

It wasn't a particularly pleasant way to spend one's sleeping hours.

He'd been crouched over a dusty old manuscript for the most of it, interrupted by Xander's phone call part of the way through, and standing watch outside Buffy's front door the rest.

_Just in case..._that's what he had said to Xander on the phone. He knew that Willow was probably harmless but if she wasn't...they were going to need back up.

Giles looked over to the boy, well man really, who slouched awkwardly beside him on the porch swing. Head in his hands, and snoring ever so faintly.

_Poor lad._ Giles thought fondly, but he would never say it out loud. Xander had insisted Giles wait for him before heading to Buffy's , saying that if there was a chance of danger that he was coming too.

Despite all his flaws Alexander Harris had always been eternally loyal.

Giles smiled a little at that.

Sure he was hard on the boy. But really, when he thought about it, at Xander's age he was in a cult worshiping chaos for the thrill of it all, so his lectures were a little hypercritical to say the least.

_And now I've got him stuck outside in the middle of December freezing his ass off for nothing. _Giles groaned internally.

When they'd reached the house last night it was obvious that nothing terrible had transpired there. The bathroom light was on, the shower running, and they could hear Dawn and Buffy laughing through the window. He knew Xander and he could have gone in, raised the alarm, battened down the hatches. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. To intrude on this rare occasion, a night of normalcy for a group of very un-normal people, would be quite heartless and most probably unnecessary with the threat seemingly contained. So he'd stayed outside, to let them have their night of simple pleasures. And Xander, despite Giles' efforts to convince the boy otherwise, had stayed with him.

_Just in case something happened... Which of course nothing did. _The watcher rolled his eyes.

_That's just so typical, the one time I predict disaster before it strikes, is the one time that..._

Suddenly a deafening screech of a squeal shrieked into the calm morning air.

Giles and Xander jolted into action.

"That came from inside." Xander stated as he urgently fumbled keys into lock and slammed the front door open.

They burst ungracefully through the entrance. Running towards the scream, abandoning all instincts of fight or flight to investigate. That was the way one responded after years of fighting demons, the Scooby response Anya had once called it, one in which human nature is exempt and foolish acts of bravery celebrated.

"Basement." Giles directed as they stumbled towards the noise. The yelling had morphed into a throaty cackle now and Giles recognized that laugh from the day before.

_Amy._

His suspicions were confirmed as they leaps down basement stairs to see Amy (still tied to a chair) laughing between excited breaths.

Tara and Willow had beat them there. Both were obviously frazzled with shock and when the watcher sore them he realized that it wasn't Willow, or the source, or the strawberry flower that had caused the disturbance. She was as perplexed as the rest of them. And felt a little lump of guilt for assuming it was her, and a swell of pride for knowing it wasn't. The relief was short lived as Amy began talking.

"Wwhat was that?! You felt that right?" Amy was gasping through words, pupils dilated and a satisfied grin pulled at her mouth. She was euphoric. And Giles had seen that buzzing gleam in her blackened eyes before, he'd seen it in addicts who'd just had a hit of something stronger then their usual dose.

"Felt what?" Buffy asked from the doorway, Yummy sushi pajamas aside, the slayer looked ready for a fight as she made her way down the stairs.

"What's going on?" Dawn was the last to find her way into the room and still had a drowsy expression clouding her features.

"Amy's screaming her lungs out and having feelings." Xander summarized quite blatantly.

"When did you guys get here?" Dawn asked in a disoriented tone looking from Giles to Xander and back again.

"Felt what Amy?" Buffy asked, ignoring the banter around her.

The hostage grinned widely and tilted her head.

"Not you Buffy. Someone with actual initiation." Amy jerked her neck in Tara's direction.

"Tare, you felt it right?" She asked, her voice shook with excitement and she nodded her head as if already answering her own question .

Tara was standing in the corner of the basement shielding Willows small form and squeezing the redheads hand so tightly behind her back that their knuckles glowed white.

Something about the way she kept her distance reminded Giles of how one might approach a wild animal.

The blonde didn't respond, not but a small shake of her head. Then a little voice came from behind her.

"Amy's all tied up...you guys see that right? She's strapped to a chair...and she looks hurt. Her nose, it could be broken we should get her to a hospital or at least..." Willow fell silent when Amy's head shot up, her eyes pieced through the strawberry flower and Giles suddenly wished he'd thought of the ramifications of having the two of them in the same place.

_Oh God no. _

"Willow." Amy's eyes flared dangerously and her face lit up like a kid in a toy store.

She smiled an unsettling grin, it was the sort of expression that sung _I know something you don't know. _

Tara stiffened and stepped protectively forward.

"Will I need you to go back upstairs for me, take Dawnie with you, go into our room and lock the door." Tara spoke with the calm confidence that assured everyone who knew her that this was serious.

The air felt dense, movements became purposefully rigid, and Giles felt his muscles strain tensely with dread.

"Do as she says Scarlet." He whispered. It was easy to use that name, because he wasn't talking to the girl, he was talking to the source.

And everything balanced on those moments, watching and waiting for the slightest wrong move to shatter the illusion of order into nothing but broken glass shattered across the the basement floor.

Willow hesitated for only a second before she focused on the back of Tara's head then nodded slightly and started to back away.

_Good girl. _Giles thought

"Wouldn't do that if I was you." Amy was playing games again, but something in her tone made Willow freeze.

"You never know what might happen while your backs turned." Amy warned lightly.

No one dared move.

"Will go." Tara insisted. Her eyes never leaving Amy.

"Things have a way of unraveling quickly...clever ghost clever flower will she prosper or devour." Amy sung in an eerier tone while holding Willow's gaze.

"How did you...?" Willow's voice was lace with awe.

"You shouldn't dream so loudly. Others might pick up your frequency. Accidentally listen in at the most inconvenient times." Amy interrupted.

"Leave. Her. Alone." Tara said slowly with more control in her voice then showed in her shaking fists.

"Or what your gonna kick me again?" Amy laughed.

Willow stood paralyzed halfway between the stairs and the wooden chair Amy was tied to.

"Someones gonna be doing alot more then kicking if you don't shut up and start being a good little crazy witch-bitch again." Buffy interjected.

"Buffy." Giles shook his head in the hope that his slayer understood that everyone would be a lot safe if they could just get Willow out of here.

"I've gotta say Tara babe this whole new side of you, the violent streak, it really turns me on...well I imagine it would if you know, I was even remotely attracted to you."

"Excuse me?" Disbelief rang through Willow's words._  
_

"Will, please just go." Tara begged, eyes never leaving Amy's.

"I think this is one of those farther knows best sorta arrangements. What was it he said when you told him? You disgusted him, a freak of nature, and nobody would ever want you because you were nothing more then a perverted souless excuse for a human being with..."

"How dare you..." Willow yelled pushing past the others in three longs strides.

And then the glass broke. Tara screamed, Dawn reached out, Buffy made a desperate attempt to grab at Willow's coat and Giles yelled "STOP" but it was all to late.

Willow had taken the bait.

And Amy had her perfect chance.

With one fluid motion she lunged towards the strawberry flower, arms suddenly freed and legs unbound, one hand snatched around Willow's neck and the other buried deep past Willow's ribs, through skin, though bone, through lungs and into her center.

White light burst from Willow's chest, a blinding explosion, and the last thing Giles heard was Amy screaming out in ecstasy.

**TBC**


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: Please stick with me, in the next update I promise you a first kiss (W/T) and I'll tell you what the deal is with Rack (I know its been illusive, but I'll tell you all the juicy details) . I was gong to try and squeeze it in here but it felt too messy. Tell me what you think (good, bad, really bored, completely random) otherwise I feel like I'm just talking to myself. Side note: the poem is The Charge of the Light Brigade by a cool guy named Tennyson, I quoted way back in Chapter 8: Her name's Willow. **

**Disclaimer: same. **

* * *

**Chapter 16: Changing the plan **

Amy had never felt a rush like that. The purest, brightest, burst of energy flooded her senses.

And for the first time since her mother betrayed her all those years ago Amy Madison felt...

_ Calm_

_ Whole_

_ Complete_

And it didn't scratch, it didn't burn, it didn't buzz or taste or drain.

It simply was.

She simply was.

And in that moment Amy decided without hesitation that if that sensation cost her her life, then she would welcome death with open arms just for another moment it.

All encompassing, all fulfilling, incorruptible peace. Peace of mind. Peace of heart. Peace of every doubt and fear and choice she had ever made.

Well that was until Buffy hit her in the back of the head, knocking her unconscious with one calculated blow.

* * *

Buffy heard Amy go down.

Her vision was nothing but white shadows and blank space, but she still had the ears of a Slayer.

"Dawn, you okay?" She yelled into the white.

"Fine, what just...?" She heard her sister say.

"Willow?" Tara's voice echoed through mist as Buffy's eyes began to recognize faded shapes and forms.

"Here." Came a shaky response. Buffy looked towards it's speaker and sore a glimpse of red through the clearing fog.

Willow staggered slightly but Tara managed to scoop an arm supportive around her.

"Easy." She said gently.

Buffy could see everyone now. Amy was collapsed at her feet, Giles stood opposite them and appeared to be getting off the floor, Xander by his side, Dawns still waited near the bottom stair, and Tara and Willow leant against each other near the old bookshelf they'd stored in the basement years ago.

"Everyone okay?" Xander asked.

He was met by nods and a chorus of 'yea '.

"Well that was defiantly..." Giles began before Willow interrupted suddenly.

"Amy? Did I hurt her? Is she..."

"Oh no, that's all me and my big fists work." Buffy gestured to the limp girl at her feet.

"It was getting a little bit too _what the hell's going on_ for my liking down here. Thought it might be best to get with the punching before anything else happened." The slayer explain.

"Yes. Good. Well done Buffy. I'd hate to think what Amy would have done if she were given any longer too react to the power. By putting the source in the vicinity of anyone with magical potential is foolish to say the least, I can't believe I didn't take that into consideration. The consequences could have been catastrophic."

"Well look at Mr Optimism." Xander deadpanned.

"I don't think she was trying to hurt anyone. She was just trying to feel something you know? Feel alive. " Willow said quietly, capturing everyone's full attention.

"I mean. She could have cast. She could have run. She could have done anything she wanted. But she didn't, she just sorta basked in the feeling of it all." She finished softly.

"Maybe. But there's a lot we need to catch you up on. Important stuff." Tara offered kindly, Willow nodded at her with a smile and draped an arm over the blondes shoulders as they started shuffling forward.

"So um, what's a source?"She asked as they made their way up the stairs. Dawn followed closely behind placing a hand on Willows back and the others trailed after.

"Wow you've missed A LOT." Buffy realized.

"You get kidnapped for one day and all hell breaks loose hey Willster." Xander joked.

Dawn and Willow laughed and Buffy smile widely, it felt familiar in the best possible way.

* * *

There was a sense of normalcy to that morning. Tara made breakfast, her famous funny shaped pancakes with a side of spaghetti and meatballs. Buffy and Dawn raided their closets to find something for Willow to wear. At first Willow suggested that she could just borrow some of Tara's clothes however the blonde seemed to find the suggestion immensely amusing, saying that 'that may have been the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her. Deluded. But sweet.'

And Dawn could see what Tara meant. Everything seemed hang loosely off the redheads shoulders. Buffy's clothes hadn't sat right. In fact they looked a bit ridiculous. Willow was quite alot taller and not quite as shapely, which lead to awkward length trousers and bunchy material at top of shirts. So they'd progressed to Dawn's wardrobe. Willow had reached the furthermost corner of Dawn's dresser which housed some dusty old things that had reached there fashion expiration date. But there they's found a form fitting blue sweater with a daisy on the front and a pair of dark jeans.

Then they'd gathered at the Magic Box, the most popular place to hold Scooby meetings. Anya had given Willow an awkward hug and patted her on the head saying " I'm glad your not soup!" In a louder voice then customary for indoors and Giles had went out the back to find the manuscript entitled "Cobwebs and Silk" to help with all the explanations.

And then they told Willow everything. Giles started, then Buffy cut in, Anya added a fact here and there, Xander offered some comic relief on the side. The only two who seemed unwilling to contribute were Dawn and Tara who both sat still as they watched Willow receive the enormous amount of life altering news that had been dumped on her in one huge heap.

Willow had started pacing, she had been for the last two minutes. Every now and then she would stop, open her mouth as if to say something and then dismiss the thought in order to resume walking.

Now everyone was watching. Silent eyes glued to the nervous girl who seemed discontent to hold still. Nothing was left to do but see how Willow reacted. Giles looked braced for impact, Buffy ready for a fight. They expected her to exploded. To scream. To freak.

She could see Willow tense and relax over and over as if trying to appear calm. She'd shake her head a little and mutter to herself softly, and under different circumstances one might think she was insane.

Every bone in Dawns body was begging for Willow to prove them wrong, to say something, do anything.

The tension in the air was palpable, buzzing currents were spilling out of Willow in waves.

* * *

Sometimes when her head got this busy, Willow wouldn't notice the little things. Like for instance the fact that she was pacing, or the fact that six pairs of eyes hung in anticipation on her next action or the obvious notion that the world continued to exist when her mind was on overdrive.

She was a planner.

But she hadn't planned this.

So she was a ghost, well had been a ghost. She'd thought she'd been realistic about her expectations of why that was...

she'd thought she was cursed,

or trapped between dimensions,

or some mistake of nature,

or misplaced among the demon realms,

or dead.

_That would simplify things. _Willow mused a little solemnly

But it had NEVER, not once, crossed her mind that she was this. That she was a source.

_Whatever that means. _Willow flinched because she knew what that meant.

_It means your not normal. Duh, you were never normal but now your also dangerous._

_As in end of the world dangerous._

_As in has to be stopped dangerous._

She hadn't factored that in to her original plan.

_"Does it change things?" _She mouthed the words a little.

_Well duh. I'm a mystical channel for all things evil._

_Does that matter?_ She muttered.

_OF COURSE IT MATTERS! I could hurt people! Will hurt people! Will hurt them, Buffy, Dawn, Giles, Xander, Anya, Tara! _She stopped walking and looked up. There they were, she didn't really pick up on the fact that everyone was staring at her, simply that they were there.

With a little shake of her head she continued her nervous movement.

_I need to stay away from them. Stay away from everyone._

Her brow crinkled as she argued with herself.

_But that directly contradicts the plan._

It was a dilemma, see this was Willow's original plan:

Phase one - attain corporeal form.

She'd been stuck in phase one for three years. Nothing helped she'd done extensive research, tried experimental theories, had Tara do every spell in the book on her. No success, she was a ghost whether she like it or not.

Until yesterday.

Phase two was simple. Kiss Tara.

And she almost had.

They'd been right there.

She'd been so close.

But just as she lent in she felt it happen.

All the tension, the wondering, the _almost there's_, the_ happening now's_, flooded from her body all at once. A rush of energy. A wave crashing. A sudden release.

Then she heard Amy scream.

And she'd known that Amy had felt it too. Felt the tension break from her body and burst into the world.

The physical embodiment of spirit.

Her spirit. Her soul.

Magic.

That's what she was, not a human, not a ghost, she was a beacon for magic.

Willow was already starting to categorize the events.

To pick apart the anomaly's, to dissect each fact one by one.

Alot had happened in so little time...

Any normal person might be in a state of shock, might be overwhelmed, might be in denial, but not Willow.

Willow was processing, she was analyzing, she was searching for a solution.

"I think we broke her." Anya interrupted her train of thought.

"Ahn, no ones broken. Right Will?" Xander trailed off in a question.

_Oh words! They want words. Speak now._

"Okay, let me get this straight. " Willow paused in an attempt to organize what she was trying to say, but it still came out in a babble of monolithic proportions

"Amy'some big bad witch who cursed us into an alternate reality for the purpose of making me go all evil-destructo-girl because I'm some magical beacon of death that channels energy directly. The curse she used is probably the result of a vengeance wish rooted in dark magicks, but Rack has the pendant thingo we need to break to get back to the real world, and we have no idea where he is or how he's involved, but we think he tricked Amy into casting the spell in the first place because he needs my help for something to do with a debt. " She finished the slurry of words and finally took a breath.

"That's about the size of it." Xander nodded.

"Well except for the strawberry stuff..." Dawn trailed off.

"Maybe we should give you some time before we deal with that." Buffy suggested.

"Oh yes, lets just wait for the petals of death to come raining down from the heavens destroy us all. that sounds reasonable." Anya argued sarcastically.

Willow winced. _Petals of death. Death from me. Scary scary me. _

"Anya."Xander chastised.

"No. Don't you 'Anya' me. We can't just ignore the fact that whether she chooses or not, she's going to be used by evil forces to do their bidding, and it's not going to be pretty." Anya spat.

"Could we just calm down for a moment? Non of this carrying on is going to help our current predicament. " Giles said with authority. Willow looked at the man, and then back at the text.

Giles seemed tied, weary, older. He was worried, and Willow knew why. He understood the black ink scrawled across parchment:

_If found but what an innocent plant who's fate is not determined. For you, dear friend, what must occur for justice to remain on corse? The age-long quest, unending doubt, what shall she be, what is to come? So ask yourself, what can you see, is it cobwebs or is it silk? _

Her conclusion was final.

"It doesn't matter does it? If I'm cobwebs or silk. If I'm great darkness or great light. It doesn't matter if my deciding moments come and gone...I'm a source, a living source. I wont be myself anymore, I'll just be what whoever cast through me makes me." It was partially a question, and partially an admittance of failure.

Giles nodded a little gravely.

"No Willow, we'll figure this out, we'll protect you, we'll..."Buffy started

"That's not what this says. I'm not the one in trouble here Buffy, I'm not the on who needs protectin. I'm the bad guy." Willow was looking at the slayer before she turned to Giles. "That's what it means isnt it? Theres no way out."

"I'm afraid so." Giles nodded again.

Through the entire conversation Willow had been doing her best not to look at Tara. Not to look at the pain in her face, the stress in her balled fingers and the defeated posture of her shoulders. But she could still feel her presence. She could feel the calm, the warmth, the depth. But Tara wasn't calm, she was frightened. _I'm frightening her. _

_Can't think about her. She makes things cloudy with hope, wont make the right decisions with my head in the clouds. _

_Can't think straight without her. _Willow was acutely aware that blue eyes followed her_. _She wished that they'd stop.

_You know what it means, just say it._

_Say it._

_Say it._

_A chance to be brave. A chance to stop the bad things that lurk and pounce and break. A chance to stop yourself._

And it came, just as it always did. That poem she never remembered learning resonating through her mind. The poem that Willow Rosenberge, the real Willow Rosenberge, had chosen to recite in eighth grade for her verbal response final and fainted before she had the chance to perform it. A subconscious reminder that she was someone else a long time ago, someone with a last name, someone with a past, she just couldn't remember who.

_Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, a__ll in the valley of death r__ode the six hundred..._It had never really bothered Scarlet, these strange idiosyncrasy, little clues of another life. But it bothered Willow.

_Forward, the Light Brigade!Was there a man dismay'd?Not tho' the soldier knew someone had blunder'd:_

She'd known it since the sewers, no other options. She need to be stopped.

_Theirs not to make reply, t__heirs not to reason why, t__heirs but to do and die..._

Everything came to an abrupt hault and she let herself look at the others, really look at her family before she said it.

Sacrifice. That's what life was about. Finding what you believed to be worth it, and then giving yourself away. She breathed a deep breath then said what she'd know all along...

"You have to kill me."

TBC

**TBC**


End file.
